Your vote could be the decider

Do you remember in 1984, when the then-president PW Botha tried one last ditch effort to prop up the failing policies of apartheid by introducing the tricameral parliament?

Botha introduced two houses of parliament for ‘coloureds’ and Indians under the argument that Africans already had their “democracy” in the homelands which his regime created along tribal lines.

In essence that is what the term “‘apartheid” means separation based on race.

Botha’s government set up the house of representatives for coloureds and house of delegates for Indians.

Rev Alan Hendrikse was one of those coloured leaders who enthusiastically grabbed this opportunity to participate, despite widespread condemnation.

What struck me was the statement Hendrikse drew up to justify his betrayal of his people. I will paraphrase, he said how do you participate in the game while sitting on the sidelines? You have to get into the field of play in order to do so.

Fortunately, almost everyone rejected the tricameral parliament as a sham and it remained an illegitimate body with little credibility among progressive coloured South Africans until its demise after Codesa and the new SA.

Hendrikse masqueraded as the representative of the coloureds until after the release of Mandela and other Rivonia trialists.

I want to be fair to Hendrikse and the few others who thought like him and believe that he genuinely believed what he was doing was the right thing to do.

The belief that you can change things from the inside was a fair one in theory but has it proven to work in practice? Can anyone go into the belly of the beast and start changing longestablished practices and succeed?

Wouldn’t that person either simply be swallowed up and get spat out when his usefulness has been diminished?

Besides what can one man or a small group of people do, or what kind of an impact could they make?

I am sure you are asking yourselves those very questions now that the election date is looming. We are left with less than 90 days before the most important election date since April ’94.

What can your single vote do to change your situation? Are you better off sitting at home letting others make decisions for you?

Do you look at the Hendrikse situation and decide that participating will not change anything?

This time, every vote counts. We need as many of the voters as possible to go and vote in May as the winner could come down to the difference of a couple of hundred votes.

If it is close as 10 votes, that might be the members of your family. Do not dare sit on the sidelines.