Colourful campaigning may just be deceit
ALEXANDRA – An election that may again defer citizens dreams.
Alex is a kaleidoscope of colour with most lamp posts adorned by election posters days before the 8 May national plebiscite.
Like a jamboree sale, the mix of yellow, blue and red posters could, if they were lit, brighten the township akin to a mini red light district. The jamboree lures the public, in particular, fence sitters still without a political home. Like peacocks, established and upstart political parties strut their feathers as they encircle and cajole undecided voters in courtship dances laced with trickery.
Alex is not spared this tug of war as many see the area as fertile ground to launch their political comeback and aspiration in a dour political contest. The campaign messages appear to have taken the voter for granted and the intrusion of the public’s cellphone space is done without regard or respect for one’s privacy. Public podiums and door-to-door campaigns seem to be the most popular platforms to pass on manifesto messages of mostly rehashed and previously unfulfilled promises. The political game is on once again and the voter, if not careful, could again cede their right only to see their dreams for a better life further deferred.
In Alex, the voter is an easy and fertile playing field in an area fraught with compounded challenges that cause high levels of desperation and exasperation, where a mere free T-shirt, promises of food parcel and pies in the sky are used to try and buy the heart and soul of voters for a short-lived honeymoon period.
The high level of unemployment, poverty, inequality and suffering are bedrocks of this exasperation which is worsened by the lack of systems, frameworks and institutions to hold the political contestants accountable for exploiting the voters through ludicrous and ‘tired’ promises which they know won’t be fulfilled. Free homes, free electricity, free land, doubled social grants and stipends for the unemployed continue to be bandied around to unsuspecting poor voters who are desperate for the very basics in life.
Without voter and democracy education to empower them with knowledge and the ability to make informed decisions and to hold parties accountable before they cede their votes, they will probably fall prey to political trickery once more. Just as during the first 1994 democratic election, the responsibility to empower the public from political abuse, should again be on the state and civil society organisations loaded with resources to protect them from unethical conduct by the political contestants.
The public needs protection against politicians with criminal conduct and records of abuse of trust and public resources which continue to be revealed by commissions of inquiry.
The public ought by right, to be protected from soiled politicians’ shameful acts of corruption, greed, avarice and lack of moral rectitude and absence feeling for the suffering multitudes still hoping for help from debilitating residues of 300 years of apartheid, including the 25 years of broken promises.
The state institutions tasked with protecting the public’s human rights should help to expose the public to the commissions’ revelations of the abuse of public trust by the soiled politicians and the well connected to enable them to make informed decisions when casting their votes.
The recent protests in Alex and finger-pointing by political parties and promises for improved service delivery, despite years of neglect by successive administrations, should hopefully be instructive lessons for residents to distinguish the trees from the wood when casting their votes.
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