MAKHUDU SEFARA | Electoral dysfunction: with these three pretenders, SA is a collapsing man

There is a video of an apparently inebriated man who, just before casting his vote, desperately tries to keep his balance, but collapses on the makeshift cardboard voting booth. The creator of the short social-media offering has inserted into the video the words: “Me next week Monday”, with a couple of laughter emojis. 

It was a spectacular collapse. 

The weight of things to consider, for many of us, is enough to see us fall, hopefully not on the Independent Electoral Commission’s (IEC) cardboard on Monday. Depending on the rubrics we’ve created to help us decide who to vote for, the collapsing man might be a metaphor for our troubled democracy and the paucity of choices available for the electorate. 

For a start, do we, after the limited period of campaigning, know the councillor candidates vying for election in our wards, what they stand for and what they’ve accomplished to make a more sober assessment of what would serve us, the voting public, better? 

Or is it a case of whoever our political parties have put forward, even if we have never heard them speak, should suffice? In other words, is it OK to outsource the decision-making — more pointedly, the thinking — to our party? Would we then object if we are, consequently, called voting cattle?

The truth is there are a lucky few who are able to make an informed assessment of councillors competing in their wards. Much of the analysis so far, and we have two-and-a-half days to go before the polls open, has been about whether Cyril Ramaphosa, John Steenhuisen and Julius Malema have run convincing campaigns for their parties — the ANC, DA and EFF, respectively. 

Malema has been particularly active, criss-crossing the country, trying desperately to show his supporters that the ANC has failed to lead and will fail to do so going forward. Steenhuisen, poor guy, seemed as confused as the collapsing guy. At one point, he tried to dance to the song John Vuli Gate. Cringeworthy stuff. Nobody explained to the chap that “Vuli Gate” has a deeper, more sexual connotation that a supposedly responsible leader ought not to associate with. But then this is Steenhuisen, a special child of our politics.

But the point is, in an election such as this, it shouldn’t matter much what spin Ramaphosa, Malema and that “vul’gate” guy throw our way. Our decisions must also not be based on national issues. Our lived experiences, our interface with our local councils must make it obvious whether those in charge not only know about, but do what needs to be done.

Even if an assessment of different councillor candidates is too tedious a task for our busy selves and we defer to our political parties, which party should it be? The ANC has been at the helm for too long and seems, like the collapsing guy, either to be about to meet its fate on the political tarmac or to continue experiencing a managed decline. This, of course, on account of the party’s failure to lead.

By way of demonstration, look at how Eskom has decampaigned the ANC’s messaging a mere four days before the elections. Where Ramaphosa criss-crossed the country saying the organisation is undoing the damage of nine wasted years, Eskom’s stage 4 power outages (not load-shedding) tell a different story. Remember, it was Ramaphosa who sanctioned changes in board appointments for key state-owned enterprises (SOEs), including Eskom, as soon as he was elected party president in 2017. Now, years later, I, as a voter, had no power from 3pm on Wednesday to almost noon on Thursday. Whether this was a combination of outages and a failure of Joburg’s City Power to get power back on is detail: in the end, I am, as a voter, placed in the dark for longer than is necessary. Ramaphosa and his comrades, who are responsible for Eskom and City Power, have failed me terribly days before asking me to vote.

More importantly, if Ramaphosa et al could not ensure that I am not saddled with these power issues from 2017 when he became de facto leader, why must I believe he will do better in the next five years? Does he even know what the problem is? Energy supply is just one issue. You make up your mind about potholes, waste removal and other services. 

Steenhuisen, poor guy, seemed as confused as the collapsing man.

If we park Ramaphosa, is Steenhuisen a worthy heir? Far from it. If the DA is to experience any growth whatsoever in this election, it is in spite of Steenhuisen. It will be because of the DA’s resilience and the ANC’s incompetence, not because of Steenhuisen’s leadership. The latest episode — his smirk as a black woman’s experience was being invalidated by Gareth Cliff on national television, his inability to open his mouth and provide leadership in that debate — confirms to those who didn’t believe earlier signs that leadership is not his thing. Yes, during parliamentary debates he does raise his voice, but any empty-headed parliamentarian can do that. Even if one disagreed with Helen Zille on many things, she at least was a strategist and never one to miss an opportunity. She only became callous and crass after leaving the DA high office. 

Economically, Malema’s push for the country’s resources to be used for the benefit of the excluded “black child” is one that, ordinarily, must resonate with the majority of those defined outside the country’s economic activity. His disadvantage is that his party has never had a chance to lead anywhere. As a consequence, many associate him with former premier Cassel Mathale’s failed leadership of Limpopo and the shadow of VBS Mutual Bank corruption looms large. He has protested against the latter, but perceptions in politics are everything.

If the top three parties in the country are not suitable, what then?

Some questions are meant to help us think beyond our predicament. If we do nothing today, if we continue to outsource decision-making about who leads our wards, our challenges today will remain with us as we approach the 30th anniversary of our democracy in 2024.

If we fail to do something between now and then, we might, like the collapsing guy in a voting booth, witness a spectacular fall that necessitates we mourn instead of celebrate.