An American in Jozi: Part 3
SANDTON – Campbell discusses her experiences surrounding the recent elections.
It has been an exciting week this week with the Municipal Elections on 3 August.
For the media, this means watching out for any problems at the voting stations and scrambling to get the names of the chosen ward councillors online as soon as the results come out.
Read: An American in Jozi
I spent much of the voting day listening to TV shows discuss the elections and trying to figure out the basics of South Africa’s political system and recent political history. I must admit, when bogged down with the Trumps, Clintons and other complicated messes that are the current American political situation, this was the first time that I sat down to learn about this country’s politics.
What I have found, though, is that basic politics do not vary that much at least from my country to yours. There are crooked politicians, there are honest politicians that get caught up in the mess and, if they have an opinion on politics, people tend to have very strong opinions on politics.
Read: An American in Jozi: Part 2
The day after voting day I was assigned two wards and told to figure out who the winners in each of those wards were. This had me calling and emailing current ward councillors and, at one point, attempting to Google the winner in one of the wards out of frustration of not getting the information I required as quickly as I needed it.
I quickly closed my web browser, though, as I realised that I could not search the results of the election because I was part of the team that would make those results searchable. That was another moment that made me step back and look at the work I am doing: I am putting information out there that has not been available to the mass public before. It makes you think about just how important the job of a journalist is.
