I stood in a voting booth on Monday morning and had one last look for a party that didn’t exist. I knew it wasn’t there, of course. But still, as I ran my finger down that column of little squares, each one demanding either grubby pragmatism or naive idealism, I hoped it might magically appear, offering a collection of uncompromised virtues.
What I was looking for was simple. I wanted a party with the gravitas and the nation-building ambitions of the activist-led ANC, before greed and cynical cronyism turned it into a sewer. I wanted the bureaucratic punctiliousness of the best of the DA, without the accompanying collapse into shrill self-righteousness when faced with valid criticism, or dog-whistles blasted at a rapidly ageing and shrinking enclave of voters.
I wanted a party that would remember and militate for the poor, like those honourable and progressive members of the EFF who have not yet realised that they are working for a prosperity church rather than a political movement.
I wanted a party that understood that farmers feed this country and that would be on their side, without also suggesting, like the FF+, that the best solution for everyone would be the establishment of a Blankestan somewhere south and west of the Orange River.
I wanted all of that, but I knew I couldn’t have it. And so I did what many of us did yesterday: I voted for the people I thought might do the least damage.
Not everyone thought the same way. At the time of writing we were headed for an historically low turnout, with a large majority of eligible voters choosing to sit Monday out.
For some who explained their decision on social media the choice not to vote or to spoil their ballots was a symbolic refusal to give their consent to a political set-up they see as a kind of unstoppable tundra fire, burning away the permafrost under our fragile country. To vote, they believe, is to throw petrol onto that fire in the mistaken belief that it will put it out.
Others explained that they had abstained or spoiled their votes to “send a message” to our political elite, a reasoning I’ve always found quite odd since an absent or spoiled vote is simply a note you send to politicians officially informing them that they no longer have to recognise your existence. (And let us say nothing of its vanity: imagine believing that your absence at a party to which 35-million people have been invited will not only be noticed but that the hosts will feel so dreadful about it that they’ll re-evaluate their entire world view.)
However, most of the conscientious objectors had fairly interesting things to say about why they boycotted Monday’s poll. So much so, in fact, that it started to feel as if South Africans who don’t or won’t vote are considerably more energised by elections than those who do vote.
Of course, the EFF supporters I follow on social media were in typically high spirits, as is always the case on these religious holidays when they gather to try to catch a glimpse of the One True Beret.
But for the rest, it all felt desaturated and worn out, like a sentimental song played too many times on a clapped-out gramophone for the same three people who’ve been coming to the same empty bar for the last 10 years.
Even my diehard ANC friends on Facebook, usually so triumphalist on election days, were subdued, half-heartedly asking South Africans to vote for the ANC so that it might be forced to become more accountable. You know, the way you force hostage-takers to surrender by sending them more hostages.
We know why there’s no more energy. Lord knows, simply reading some of the analysis of why there’s no more energy is enough to tip one into enervated despair. But I wonder if there’s also a possible explanation that might offer some hope.
As I read all those posts on Monday by people who had just voted, each repeating the same knackered platitudes about patriotism and standing on the shoulders of giants, I saw that the old drugs are not working any more.
The political and ideological slogans and catch-phrases of the 1990s, so heady and electric when spoken by Nelson Mandela and his early colleagues, have lost their potency. The buzz is gone.
As I said, there are many reasons for our current malaise. But what if one of them is the deep, upsetting boredom triggered by having to face political sobriety? What if, having hit rock bottom with Jacob Zuma, and then stumbled straight into the intense disappointment of Cyril Ramaphosa’s presidency, with its horrible moments of clarity like the looting of personal protective equipment money and Digital Vibes, a growing mass of South Africans has begun to lose faith in old stimulants; in heroes and villains; in the fantasy that a political party should be able to tick all our boxes?
What if this all feels so grim and sick and empty because, for the first time in 27 years a nation of drama-addled, political thrill-seekers is having to face the boring truth that elections are not about saviours and righteousness and them versus us, but are simply a way of finding and hiring the people who can keep water in the pipes?
What if we’re about to start getting better?
• Eaton is an Arena Holdings columnist.
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