At a time like this, I often think about the South Africans who died fighting for freedom and are buried in unmarked graves across our continent. And I remember those who died just before the 1994 democratic elections.
I do this so I can answer correctly the question: what is the right thing to do for our country? Is it to give the ANC another chance, or to vote for a right-wing opposition party? The time for pontification has come and gone. The die is cast. A sense of foreboding often sets in just days before elections. Will people come out in large numbers to do right by those who sacrificed it all for this, our democracy?
For me, that is what the cost of freedom is: it’s not about how much money our current pretenders to the throne spend to be in office, but rather the lives and limbs our true heroes sacrificed for us to be free.
I wonder, too, what our responsibility is, as those now charged with electing a new crop of leaders? Did our heroes die in vain? Sadly and unforgivably, this democracy they risked their lives for has become a sick joke.
If they knew before risking it all that our democracy would become what it is now, would they have fought for us as gallantly as they did? What would they make of our being led by Cyril Ramaphosa? Is he the best of all of us to take this country forward — given Phala Phala and everything else considered? What does “taking us forward” look like for the homeless of Alex, the waterless of Seshego in Polokwane, or the unemployed of Khayelitsha in Cape Town? Is it continuation of social grants (and hoping for the best), or is it something more meaningful? If so, what is it?
We should not mortgage our votes and our beingon the basis of someone having a reputation for removing waste in a timely manner or making sure potholes are filled and traffic lights work
What would they make of our having once been led by a wrecking ball called Jacob Zuma, who did not even have a matric, for almost two terms? What would they think about the efforts to remove Ramaphosa by another leader armed with matric and barely anything else — John Steenhuisen?
If those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our democracy agreed the ANC has messed up and it is time for change, what would they make of the country’s second-biggest party, the DA, led mainly by a group of white males with palpable disdain for transformation?
This political entity seems to believe black people have no choice but to vote for them simply because they are so upset with a failing ANC. However, notwithstanding the ANC’s failures, the DA has no agency to position itself to appeal to the majority ofvoters. It sees its historic mission as being to maintain the support of a small core of right-wing voters, and then rely on a “moonshot pact” to bring inside the tent some smaller black parties charged with responsibility for wooing the black vote. Shameful.
The DA, as the second-biggest party in the country, was duty-bound to make itself relevant to all sections of society, to prepare to take over from the ANC. It failed in this task. On the eve of this election, it’s not talking about taking over from an incompetent ANC, but rather mumbling about “coalitions” because it knows it has messed up. And the ANC is not just rolling over and dying — it’s bringing out its elders, solving load-shedding and filling up FNB Stadium. It will die trying, knowing its main challenger is blinded by right-wing race politics.
Assume the worst — Steenhuisen’s DA wins more than 50% of the vote and he (in his dreams) takes his place in the Union Buildings. Would the people who died in pursuit of our freedom rest in eternal peace, or feel the rest of us are peeing on their shallow graves?
What, in the end, is the right thing to do for our democracy? I think that, as much as the ANC may have fluffed a 30-year opportunity to restore the dignity of our people, the DA has failed in those three decades to be relevant to the biggest voting bloc in the country. It makes much of its “where we govern, we govern better” slogan.
We should not mortgage our votes and our being on the basis of someone having a reputation for removing waste in a timely manner or making sure potholes are filled and traffic lights work. While services are important, our votes often express who we are and what we yearn for, rather than what we get.
And who are we? We are descendants of victims of colonial subjugation and deliberate racist exclusion. It is not by mistake that our places of abode are outside the country’s active economic areas, forcing us to spend much of our earnings on transport and food. We remain the most discriminated against and the most disadvantaged, even though we are the majority in our land. We are born of Peter Nchabeleng, Onkgopotse Tiro, Steve Biko, Sabelo Phama, Chris Hani, Oliver Tambo, Solomon Mahlangu, Victoria Mxenge, Walter Sisulu and Robert Sobukwe. We are not the ones whose votes you buy by simply collecting refuse timeously. You need to do much more.
As Thandiswa Mazwai sings in Nizalwa Ngobani?: “The ghetto is our first love, and our dreams are drenched in gold. We don’t even cry (no more). Are the beautiful ones really dead?” They’re not.
They’re reborn in Songezo Zibi’s Rise Mzansi, in Julius Malema’s EFF, in Mmusi Maimane’s Build One South Africa. That we are unhappy with the ANC does not mean we must vote for those who don’t take our history seriously. We must never sponsor right-wing counterrevolution. Our democracy came at a real cost, and many such as Tiro, Biko and Hani did not live to see it.
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