I’ve lost count of the number of elections I’ve voted in since turning 18.
While I have always had to think hard about who to vote for, it has never been difficult to decide who to vote against. That’s the easier decision.
In the 60s and 70s, politics was about white interests, period. Black politics was the elephant in the room, the boogeyman that nobody talked about, except in the swartgevaar sense.
My parents and their friends were largely United Party supporters, not least because the UP and the National Party were divided along lines of language and culture. English-speakers largely voted UP.
However, it was not long before I realised that the UP was merely the export version of the NP, the Outspan orange of politics, so to speak.
So my vote went to the Progressive Party, firstly because it was against the NP and secondly, because of Helen Suzman. I was working in the press gallery when she was the lone PP voice in parliament and what a voice that was!
Grown men quailed when she launched into them. Denounce her they might, but even thug John Vorster and the Groot Krokodil, PW Botha, could not ignore her. Or shut her up.
The first time I changed my vote was in the euphoria of 1994 when I voted DA for province and ANC for national, because I fervently wanted the past behind us and believed the Nelson Mandela would be the Messiah.
Ha! The reality of politics in the new SA is that there are no Noddy badges for those who had supported the Progs against the Nats. And white reverence of Mandela has earned him the title of ‘sellout’ in some Black circles.
It should come as no surprise that each group looks after its own.
It has been that way since the first invaders – white and black – obliterated the KhoiSan.
What has followed ever since – the Border wars, the rule of Shaka, the Zulu and Boer wars, apartheid – have been the struggle for dominance by one racial group over another. And the victors live off the fat of the land.
It follows then that the ANC has concentrated on Black interests, when it isn’t plundering.
Through providing housing, roads, electricity (even if stretched thin to breaking point), water, etc to the masses, which there is no denying it has achieved much.
But it has also shamelessly crippled the State through cadre deployment and mismanagement.
Even its supporters have displayed their displeasure this week by staying away from the polls in large numbers.
Because of the shameless stealing and distrust of whites exhibited by both the ANC and its Gucci revolutionary arm, the EFF, I’m left with a choice between the traditional DA and the new kids on the block, ActionSA.
Just an aside – isn’t it odd that black people run the civil service, police, military and take the lion’s share of government tenders, but ‘white capital’ is still singled out as the enemy. It’s as though the politicians have to desperately find a scapegoat to cover their own shortcomings.
We all live in the prisons of our skins.
On a local level, I have no hesitation in putting my mark for my DA ward councillor, Privi Makhan, because she is a tireless worker.
She is the first to stand up when there is a job to be done and the last to go home.
The DA has retained its 3 seats in the Ballito area, though at the provincial and national level the DA has blundered about, shooting itself in the foot again and again. Its saving grace is that it does run the Western Cape rather well.
ActionSA’s main support will be in Gauteng, but early counting here suggests there may be strong support across the municipality which should ensure it a few PR seats in council (and there is a possibility that they won a seat in Stanger).
Its time will come in the next election, if it performs well, if the DA doesn’t get its act together.
So the question is: how to cast my vote for PR and province? DA or ActionSA? I may just have to flip a coin in the polling booth.
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