Which political party should we vote for in the general election?
SA is going through a lot of challenges which have the potential of reversing the earnings of almost 30 years of hard-earned democracy.
Unfortunately most of those challenges find their origin and solution within the political system we decide to vote for in our election years.
This means that the political party or parties we vote for can either make or break our hopes for a better SA.
That’s why voting is so important.
Simply put, if you don’t vote you are actually voting indirectly for any chaos that may arise in the future.
As we look back at our voting trends, we realise that we have been voting mostly along racial lines and with the view of our historical past we came from.
The challenge we are now facing is that this kind of voting has not yielded the good life for all which we desired.
This brings the need to ask ourselves as to how to vote differently to have the better SA we are all looking for.
The scientist Albert Einstein once stated that “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.
Just to give the readers an idea of our current challenges as a nation before we choose which party to vote for, let’s look at the various sectors of our government.
According to The Herald of June 22 2023, load-shedding is costing the Nelson Mandela metro R1bn a month in financial terms.
The same newspaper reported in its front page article on May 10 2023 that crime had become so bad that criminals now had the guts to shoot and kill the police who should be seeing to safety and order in our communities.
Our water quality has declined to the extent that citizens have to boil it before drinking it.
The Hammanskraal polluted water which caused the outbreak of cholera is an example.
SA’s rivers and dams have a severe problem of microbial contamination from faecal pollutants to the extent that 53% of the sampled sites are at a risk to people’s health if crops eaten raw are irrigated with this water.
Tens of thousands of households still use the undignified bucket sanitation system.
In our education sector, eight out of every 10 children cannot read for meaning by the age of 10 and a whopping 81% of grade 4 pupils cannot read for meaning.
In the political arena, we sit with coalitions which are so volatile and unstable that the recent two Nelson Mandela Bay mayors were in office only for 10 months and eight months.
The current mayor, who was elected on May 26 2023 is already facing motions of no confidence from some quarters.
The unemployment rate according to the expanded definition of unemployment stands at more than 40%, which means that nearly half of our people are unemployed.
At the same time, 55.5% (30.3-million) of our population is living in poverty.
Perhaps after reading the title of this article, and the socioeconomic ills mentioned above, some readers are now expecting me to give a name of a political party which I would like to propose for us to vote for in the national election of 2024.
Unfortunately I won’t do that for obvious reasons.
What I will do is propose the characteristic of a political party which will deliver on the future that we as South Africans are longing for.
I will therefore suggest here the nine simple characteristics of the political party we need to vote for if we are serious about the SA dream of a society which is nonracial, prosperous and democratic.
We need to rethink our voting habits and vote for a party that will be best placed to deal with and resolve the following challenges facing our beloved country:
● Load-shedding, which is destroying our economy and livelihoods of our communities;
● A party which will tackle and exterminate corruption irrespective of colour, social status or political affiliation;
● Creation of worthwhile, decent jobs through sustainable job creation programmes and initiatives;
● A party that can bring back morals in our beloved SA through moral regeneration;
● A party which is pro-poor so that we deal decisively with our triple challenge of poverty, inequality and unemployment;
● A party that can attract sustainable investments to boost our economy;
● A party that is best suited to tackle and stop all forms of social and racial discrimination;
● A party which has a good history and ability to deliver services to our people;
● A party that will be able to stop the spiralling crime in our beloved country;
● A party that can look after our vulnerable members of society
such as women, children, the elderly and the physically challenged;
● A party that will fix our education system which is in dire straits and deliver quality education; and
● A party that can deliver good quality public services to the citizens of this country.
To achieve the above aspirations, as voters we need to look more closely at the manifesto of every political party before we vote for it.
This is because when you vote for a certain political party you are giving them your consent, mandate and support to do what they said they would do in their manifesto.
As an example, you can’t vote for a party that supports
crime and go to your church or mosque or prayer house and pray to God to reduce crime in the country.
God will just laugh at your or my stupidity if you do that.
Its is time to vote differently in 2024.
With all due respect to our racial formations and the hard-earned freedom from our apartheid past voting along racial lines or along our historical 2024 will not deliver the better life for all we so earnestly desire for our beloved SA.
Please vote — in fact, if things go wrong we will have to blame those who did not vote as much as those who voted wrongly.