Extract As I write this, we are a mere 12 days away from our general election and I still don’t know who I’m going to vote for. I know, I know; it’s becoming a little wearying, my constant carping about the difficulty of choosing where to put my cross. For a very short while, I thought that everyone in the country, except for the party-faithful stalwarts, had the same difficulty that I have.
I assumed that people were reading manifestos, studying lists, weighing up options, carefully examining the various parties and candidates and — excruciatingly — wringing their hands and shaking their heads as they worked through the quagmire.
I was wrong. We’re going to have a very crowded, ballot paper, I said rather mournfully to an intimidatingly smart young African colleague. But, there’s absolutely nobody to vote for. This young black woman, who will have global influence in the PR and communications field in the years to come, looked confused.
People will, she said, vote exactly as they have always voted. It’s what people do.
It’s an intriguing thought. Disturbing too. Are people’s loyalties locked in from the very start of the process? If you voted for one party at the beginning of our democracy in 1994, is that how you will vote for life? Is there no room for change? What, then, is the purpose of democracy if we can’t change our minds and vote out people who are not fulfilling their mandate?
Should those non-performers not be punished for being unable to deliver on their election promises? If service delivery is not forthcoming, should those same incompetent people be allowed back into office?
These questions ran riot in my head, without any real answers. So I took myself off to an evening where researchers in the field debated the issue of race, identity and voting.
What emerged was more confusion for me. It seems that I’ve been thinking inaccurately about the politics of race and identity and people’s voting patterns. For a start, a lot of the debate centred around what seems an anomaly — though on closer inspection, I’m surprised that people are surprised: while smaller parties (over the last four elections) are shrinking, the Freedom Front Plus (FF+) is growing members and is expected to garner more votes this election.
As we know, the FF+ is a national SA political party that has as its policy position a commitment to self determination. They want to protect the rights of minorities (mostly, in their case, the white minority) in an open democracy. Of course they do. It’s in their interest to want this.
There was a derisive ripple among the black men I was sitting next to when a young black woman introduced herself as a DA supporter
As it is in the interest of working-class black people to believe in the promises being made by Julius Malema of the EFF.
The name itself is a giveaway (the Economic Freedom Fighters) — this party sells itself as crusaders fighting against state imperialism, as it unmasks cultural and class contradictions.
So, I am left wondering: if you’re poor and black and identify with the downtrodden, forgotten members who are still waiting for services to be delivered, do you automatically vote EFF?
If you’re educated, middle-class and black, do you vote ANC because — though you might abhor the criminality of some members on the list, and be appalled by the level of corruption and theft being unmasked at the Zondo commisison into state capture – it’s how you’ve always voted?
If you’re a disaffected white person, at the pointy end of the BEE scale whose child didn’t make the quota to get into medicine despite her high matric mark, do you vote for the FF+?
If this is the case then people are falling into the trap of not being critical simply because they identify as being black and oppressed or white and unseen, ignored and overlooked?
It follows, then, that using race and class as a decision-making tool removes the ability to critique party manifestos.
‘That white party’
During the debate I attended, there was a derisive ripple among the black men I was sitting next to when a young black woman introduced herself as a DA supporter when she rose to ask a question.
In case I thought he might agree with her politics, the man next to me told me she was the rare exception and that real black people (this announced loudly to the entire row) would not vote for that white party.
This despite the DA leader Mmusi Maimane being black? I asked. His response, which received vigorously nodding heads in the neighbouring rows: “Sell out. They fight for white people, not us.”
This statement underpinned one of the relevant issues discussed at the debate: how blackness and oppression have become synonymous. People are being asked to think about themselves in ways that complete the apartheid design, one of the speakers said.
It’s insanely true! Race continues to be used by political parties as a pull-tool. And, the language used on the election trail continues the legacy of the past. It’s the commodification of blackness.
I am bewildered, too, by what seems to be a new level of “black oppression comparison” that is emerging. A black man astonishingly (true story) told another black man: “I have suffered more than you. I grew up poor in the townships, you lived in the suburbs and went to a model C school. I am blacker than you.”
So, what I am taking away from it all is this: white, coloured and Indian voters will cast their ballot for anything that stands for non-racialism. They will do this because they are in the minority. They will vote for any party that stands for or promotes and supports non-racialism because it is in their interest to do so.
Black people will vote on racial lines, because it is in their interest to do so.
Me? I still don’t know how I will vote. If I listen to my own assumption, then I have to choose a party that promotes, supports and advocates for a non-racial society.
But which one is that?
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