Vote with your head, not heart
Welcome to 2019, election year and the circus is back in town.
My request is that everyone of every race thinks very carefully before they cast their vote.
I have been talking to and listening to people of all races, and am amazed at the naivety of mainly white people who seem to think that Cyril Ramaphosa is the new messiah and can cure this country of all its ills.
I believe that he is personally unsullied, but he sat next to former president Jacob Zuma and his cohorts while this beautiful country, most notably the poorest of the poor whom they claim to represent, was being captured and looted by said Zuma.
Where are all the billions that have disappeared for the benefit of Zuma and his family via the Guptas who have laughed all the way to the bank?
How many houses, schools and hospitals would this have provided for the poor people, most of whom have been voting for this corrupt regime?
If the ANC is victorious do you really think Ramaphosa will be president for his full term, when he is still going to be surrounded by the crooks who benefited from the state capture?
It is now 25 years since our new democracy, but because the ANC has been such a failure, it insists on looking back at all its hardships, instead of moving forward to rectify those hardships.
Then, as always, racism rears its ugly head.
No one to blame any more, so let’s blame the white people, who in all honesty only want to live in peace and help to rebuild SA.
The EFF is blatantly and violently openly racist, but the ANC to keep up has started to copy its rhetoric.
In all this the poor people suffer, but when these parties turn up in their black SUV motorcades and their bodyguards to hand out their paltry food parcels and T-shirts, and make empty promises, the vast majority will be out there voting them in for another five years.
I was born two years before World War 2, and lived through the hardships, the poverty and the loss of so many brave men.
The whole world was truly devastated, and millions of lives of all races and creeds were lost.
I was very young, but remember it vividly.
Then 25 years after the end of that war, 1970, the world had moved on, no time for any more hate, there was a world to rebuild.
People to rehome, families to be traced and so the work began, and although there were many obstacles to overcome, economies were starting to make gains.
I point this out because this is 25 years of world devastation.
The ANC has had exactly that same amount of time.
For all the terrible things that the National Party wrought on SA, it left a coun- try with sound infrastructure on which to build.
Look around you, what do you see?
Crumbling roads, failing hospitals, schools that are unfit for our children – one could go on, but all we have had is corruption and greed.
I feel this is the last chance to save us from the same fate as every other African state.
Where are the credible opposition parties?
You should be out there shouting loud and clear your message.
We don’t need a smattering of small parties, every democracy need a strong opposition, for you will see that very shortly the ANC will join up with the EFF, as it has in our city, and look what we are left with: a puppet mayor whose strings are being pulled by Andile Lungisa, a convicted criminal.
I appeal to everyone to go to cast your vote, whatever may be your preferred party.
Don’t ever think your one vote will make no difference, but please think very carefully before you place your cross.
It may be the difference between hope and despair, and look at Zuma in his Madiba shirts and ask yourself: is this what I really want?
Vote with your head and not with your hearts. Jane Slim South End, Port Elizabeth