Today is Election day in SA and a public holifday

I can remember elections of many years ago.   We were very small kids when my father and mother went off to my uncle and aunt to listen to the election results.  It was 1948 and the farmers were in serious financial trouble.   General Smuts gave England a loan in wool and gold to get the British industries going and the farmers were paid nearly nothing for the wool.   So the election results were eagerly awaited by the farmers in particular.  Cannot remember anything - but we were allowed to play with my cousins and knew nothing about politics - so that really was enjoyable.

Many years later a friend of mine was candidate in the Durban Point Constituency - where I lived at the time.  He asked me to do some canvassing for him since I was quite well-known in the area.  I agreed and went from flat to flat canvassing for him. A very old lady answered my knock on the door and then said her husband was waiting for a visit.  A very old man - he told me his father was from Ireland and lived in Pretoria before the Anglo Boer War in a house opposite the street from where President Kruger lived.  His father would often have coffee with the old President and he would go with.  The president would pick him up and he sat on his lap while his father conversed with him.  When my friend afterwards asked me what I think what the result would be I confidently told him he would win by 1950 votes.   His actual majority was 1983 votes. 

Incidentally - President Kruger pretended he did not understand a word of English - but he was actually fluent in speaking and writing English.   When an English representative came for talks with him discussions took hours because the visitor would make a statement - it was then translated to Dutch - the President would answer in Dutch - and a translation would follow.  Any discussion would only start after an hour-long discussion on farming conditions lasting at least an hour.  Meantime he knew what was said and the translations was a farce giving him time to formulate a response.   

Then there was a case when I was asked to assist the in the campaign for a Yes Vote in the referendum in 1991 - that led to the 1994 constitution.  I had no love for the National Party of the time - but realized that change was essential - so I agreed again.   During the campaign President De Klerk had tea with the canvassers and Mrs De Klerk spoke to me and asked me how I think the campaign is going.   I told her there is no worry in the Durban Point area for them and that 85% of the voters would vote Yes - she seems surprised and said "Is that not too high?".  It turned out that the "Yes" vote won in the area by 85,25%.   

Do you think I knew the people in the area - as well as their concerns.   Most residents were poor and there was many elderly widows among them.   They lived in little one-roomed flats and they often enough were neglected by their children.  I did a lot of social work there and knew their concerns.   Believe me - there is a myth that the Whites under the old regime was wealthy - a substantial percentage were poor and when Dr Albertina Luthuli - the daughter of Albert Luthuli - came back to SA in 1990 she told me that she did not realize how many Whites were in fact poor people.

So I assume I must go and vote now - it should not take time.  The polling booth is very near to my house and there are a very few registered voters in the area - I guess about 400.

But because of the public holiday the rugby teams would only be available on the websites tomorrow in any e vent.      

WEDNESDAY’s national and provincial elections could be a game-changer for the still-evolving transition of our country from apartheid into a genuine nonracial democracy.

It is a day when you, the ordinary voter, have a rare opportunity to influence the way in which our new South Africa — the promising "rainbow nation" for all that was launched with so much excitement 20 years ago — is being run by the African National Congress (ANC) government under President Jacob Zuma.

It is your opportunity to assess its performance and to pass judgment.

If you believe that the Zuma ANC has done well over the past five years, that it has delivered on Nelson Mandela’s dream of "a better life for all", that it has enhanced the quality of our democracy and South Africa’s status in the eyes of the world, then you will doubtless vote for the ANC, so that it can continue on the same course for the next five years.

But if you believe it has not, that it has betrayed Mandela’s dream by widening the gap between rich and poor, by drifting away from nonracialism and some of the basic tenets of democracy, and that it is sinking into a deplorable state of personal greed, corruption, nepotism, cronyism, ethnic chauvinism and plain incompetence, then you should most certainly not vote for it to continue as before.

You should vote against it.

If all those factors of failure distress you, but you still go ahead and vote ANC on Wednesday out of a sense of loyalty to it, or because you feel it is your party and that of your forebears, you will have betrayed your duty as a citizen of this democracy for which so many fought and suffered and died.

You will have betrayed the new South Africa and the hopefulness its birth gave to us all.

And you will have betrayed yourself. For then you will have forfeited the moral right to complain about poor service delivery, about the state of our education system and our health services and our potholed roads; about e-tolls and electricity charges, cadre deployment and tenderpreneurship, the Guptas and Nkandla. You will have declared all those things to be okay.

There should, in fact, be a new slogan out for this election: "Vote ANC for a better life for JZ." If that’s what you really want, go ahead and vote for it.

But worst of all, you would be voting for continued moral decline. The soul of the ANC, once its proudest asset derived from a leadership of incredibly dedicated men and women, has been in a state of decay ever since Zuma took over. This is because he successfully ducked the 700-plus counts of corruption and money-laundering he faced as a result of the arms deal scandal.

In doing so, he undermined the rule of law, by indirectly putting pressure on the national director of public prosecutions to withdraw the charges on highly questionably grounds. This was followed by blatantly defying an order of the Constitutional Court to release the so-called "spy tapes" on which that dodgy decision was based.

In between, we have also had the appointment of a commission of inquiry into the arms deal, which appears to have interpreted its role as being to filibuster the issue to death.

And now we see pressure tactics being employed to stall a parliamentary inquiry into the public protector’s serious findings on the Nkandla scandal until the election is over.

How can such a leader possibly be expected to lead a moral crusade against the rampant corruption now corroding the soul of the ANC?

Nor is that all. As struggle veteran Barney Pityana noted in a trenchant article in last week’s Mail & Guardian, democracy itself is under threat as the total domination of one party in our politic system shows signs of drifting towards one-party authoritarianism.

Zuma himself seems to have a limited understanding of democracy, having once lectured the leader of the opposition, Lindiwe Mazibuko, on his contention that the majority have more rights than minorities. Zuma has also made several public statements revealing an inadequate knowledge of important aspects of South Africa’s constitution, which he swore to uphold and protect when he took his oath of office.

Pityana cites the Protection of State Information (or "secrecy") Bill and the ANC’s repeated attempts to push through the Traditional Courts Bill, which turns thousands of rural people, especially women, into vassals of the old Bantustan chiefs for easy manipulation, as evidence of these tendencies.

Moreover, Pityana adds: "A culture has now developed in which the party has collapsed its identity into that of the state. South Africa under the Zuma ANC has all the makings of a descent into an authoritarian one-party state."

If you, the undecided voter, don’t want to see that happen, if you want to arrest the drift in that direction and see the government also begin a serious campaign against corruption, then it is your civic duty to send a strong message to the ANC on Wednesday.

You can do that by voting against it. Don’t stay away from the polls because, given our proportional representation system, abstaining won’t affect the outcome of the election one iota. Party seats are allocated according to the percentages of votes cast for them, and an abstention doesn’t change that. Spoiling your vote by writing "No" across it is better than nothing, but is still only a half-hearted step that is little more than a gesture of self-appeasement.

Rather cast a "tactical vote" for another party, best of all for the strongest of them, the only one capable of ever growing into a serious challenger to the ANC, which is the Democratic Alliance (DA). To strengthen it with more black support would also see it undergo more of the progressive transformation that is already under way within it.

How might such a vote help arrest the drift? I believe that if the ANC gets less than 60% of the vote at national level, and less than 50% in Gauteng, that would send it a serious wake-up call. Enough to jolt it into considering the early "recall" of Zuma as president.

Those are achievable goals for the DA, but only at a stretch. It would require the party to outperform the predictions of some opinion polls and most analysts. But with a late swing, I believe it is possible, and even if the result is close to that, it would give the ANC cause for deep thought.

There are still good men and women in the ANC, who are seriously troubled by the trend the party has taken under Zuma and who could put it back on track if he were "recalled". Clean, competent people who could take over and stem the drift towards deeper moral decay and political decline. None more so than the sidelined Kgalema Motlanthe.

The ANC’s terrible mistake was not to have elected this widely respected figure as its leader at the party’s Mangaung national conference only 16 months ago. But it is not too late to bring him back. A strong enough election jolt on Wednesday could do the trick.

 Whackhead phones the ANC

http://youtu.be/M07Qa17c0XA