With less than a week to go, some South Africans still seem to be slightly confused about what local government elections are actually for. But nobody is more confused than the EFF, whose slogan — “Victory Or Death” — suggests they have misunderstood the assignment to a spectacular degree.
You expect hyperbole, of course, especially from party selling very little beyond revolutionary rhetoric. Honesty is all well and good, but “Victory Or Death” sounds so much better than more accurate promises like “Small Incremental Wins Or Fractionally Slower Growth For Julius Malema’s Personal Wealth”.
It’s also not as if any EFF voters will take the slogan at face value. I’ve written before about how most South African voters seem so easily satisfied by nothing but vibes from their parties, and the EFF faithful will understand that this slogan, too, is more of the same; that their party is not going to win anything close to a victory, and that nobody will have to face literal death.
Indeed, if we were having a general election next week, an event dictated almost entirely by vibes, I’d have to admit that the EFF’s slogan was pretty good, the sort of rousing, meaningless pap that ends critical thought even as it galvanises the faithful.
The trouble, however, is that we are not having a general election next week: we are have a local government election. And the fact that we’re still awash in vibes and ideological rhetoric and grand narratives about vague futures and ill-defined identities shows the extent to which we still don’t understand what we’re about to do on Wednesday.
It goes without saying that your vote is your business. Well, except if you vote ANC in Johannesburg: then it’s the whole country’s business because you’re actively trying to plunge the republic into collapse.
When we vote next week, we are not voting for vibes. We are not declaring our allegiance to a party and its broader ambitions for the country, or getting into lockstep behind a collective identity.
What we are doing is hiring the people who will fix a broken water pipe the same day it breaks, working into the night, after hours, to get the job done.
We’re hiring the people who have shown a willingness and an ability to keep streetlights on, or collect garbage regularly, or promote and support community centres and services.
We’re hiring the people who listen, yes, but then act, and act professionally, quickly, legally and on budget.
In short, we are voting in our own, very focused self-interest. We are voting for what we want, where we live, far away from the corridors of political power; for what is owed to us as taxpayers who employ everyone in all those parties.
It goes without saying that your vote is your business. Well, except if you vote ANC in Johannesburg: then it’s the whole country’s business because you’re actively trying to plunge the republic into collapse. But as you decide how you’ll vote on Wednesday, I’d like to close by urging you to visit ballotbox.co.za, which has revealed which of the candidates in your ward are also running in other wards.
To be clear, running in multiple wards is entirely legal, which is why a staggering 50% of all candidates contesting next week’s election are standing in multiple races.
Still, I think voters can benefit from knowing whether the person claiming to want to represent their neighbourhood is saying the same thing to people on the other side of the city. There’s a part of me that respects the hustle of the two candidates who are standing in a whopping 135 wards, but as a voter I’m not overwhelmed with confidence that they care about my ward, or, indeed, know where it is …
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