The opening season is open
The politicians whose names we had forgotten are suddenly initiating new projects
Thursday. Give or take four weeks and we’re voting. The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) is printing the ballot papers so they can be distributed abroad in time for the two days of consulate voting, starting on 17 May.
There might be an inversion of the 1994 situation and the need to remove a party from the ballot — at least the papers are being printed in South Africa these days — but failing that, it’s all systems go.
The parties are hard at it, particularly down here in the Kingdom, which everybody wants a part of after 29 May.
The president and his entourage spent the weekend in Durban and elsewhere in Kwazulu-natal, kissing babies, hugging grannies and promising to fix the water crisis — as well as the rest of the mess their party has created in recent years — if they are given another chance on election day.
It’s a month to go and the season of openings is officially open.
Cyril Ramaphosa and his cabinet are cutting ribbons, delivering opening addresses and commissioning projects all over the country — as is the practice every five years.
People whose names we haven’t heard since the last elections — who we thought had died during Covid19 for all the work they do — are suddenly all over TV and social media, promising us things they have failed to deliver since the last time they lied to us, live and direct.
This time around, there is an intensity — and desperation — to it.
It is as if the ANC, Ramaphosa, his 30 ministers, their deputies and every MEC, MP and councillor in the country suddenly woke up to the fact that the country is broken and needs to be fixed, urgently, if they are to have a job on 1 June.
The head of state is, as we speak, addressing the opening of the transport summit on universal accessibility, just in time to remind the industry that he and the ANC want another five years in office.
My money is on the industry being no closer to universal accessibility when the next summit is called, sometime in April 2029, than it is today.
Perhaps I’m just being cynical. There are more or less 30 days to go until we vote and I am no more sure as to who I am going to give my X to than I was this time last year.
I know who isn’t getting my vote — any confusion on my part ahead of the campaign has dissipated as the hustings have progressed — but I’m still far from convinced by those who I could imagine actually voting for.
Not that any of the parties have tried all that hard to court me — electorally speaking — before this landmark national and general election.
There has been the odd SMS from the Democratic Alliance (DA), encouraging me to register and help them to rescue South Africa from the ANC and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).
The DA also parked a trailer with a billboard with their Kwazulu-natal premier candidate Chris Pappas on it on the median in the road across from my flat the one morning, a couple of months ago, but that’s been it thus far.
The EFF did drive past after their manifesto launch in February — so did an umkhonto wesizwe party convoy after one of their cases in the Durban high court last month.
But nobody’s actually knocked on the door and hustled me for my vote.
Come to think of it, the only time I have ever encountered an actual door-to-door canvasser as a voter — apart from in 1994 — was in the 1996 local government elections.
I was visiting my parents on the Bluff in Durban when the would-be Conservative Party ward councillor turned up, asking to speak to the head of the household.
The old man was civil and gave him a hearing — that is until Adolf asked for his help in keeping the ward white.
Gerald set the dogs on him — my old man was cool like that — and they chased him off the property, and into Hillhead Road, never to be seen again.
The dogs were spaniels, more likely to lick you to death than rip your throat out, but the Ubermensch didn’t know that and didn’t slow down until he reached the safety of his car parked on the corner, running as if the hounds of hell were at his heels.
I’m dogless but have been passed over in 30 years of door-to-door, my vote apparently unwanted, by every party in every election for three decades of democracy.
I don’t have much hope for this election either, but perhaps there is still time.
It is as if the ANC, Ramaphosa, his 30 ministers, their deputies and every MEC, MP and councillor in the country suddenly woke up