Still don’t know why I should vote DA

Fellow Thought Leader contributor Grant Walliser recently wrote a lengthy piece titled “Why I will vote for the DA” — I must sheepishly confess that I rather enjoyed it. Being the notorious fence-sitter that I am (read: willing to be swayed by compelling arguments), I like watching people with hearts around their sleeves.

Grant opened up his piece by pointing out that he was inspired by Michael Trapido coming “out of the closet” and endorsing the ANC — I had also read Trapido’s piece and found it to be sublime in its brutal honesty about the ANC’s shortcomings and also in the clarity of the rationale employed by the author in wanting to see his beloved ANC go back to the Union Buildings and take another bite at executing their own policies. Whether I agree with Traps or not is irrelevant.

Let me get this out of the way. I am making the assumption that when Trapido penned his article, he was saying, “Here are my reasons for voting ANC, maybe you should consider doing the same”. Good ole fashioned electioneering. I have to assume that this was Grant’s motivation too. So, for the purposes of this exercise, I will treat Grant the same way I would treat any other oke shoving DA pamphlets under my nose at the mall.

The title of Grant’s blog was “Why I will vote for the DA”, so I was looking forward to reading all about the DA. I have, in the past, expressed my frustration at most DA representatives’ propensity to waste my time by telling me about the ANC and being rather frugal with the DA’s great strengths.

So how did Grant’s 2 351-word piece fare? Well:

1. The first thing Grant shares with us are his reasons for not voting ANC. He uses up 1 379 words to this end.
2. Only at the end does he give us his reasons for voting DA. He uses 680 words to do so.
3. In fact, throughout the piece he typed the word “ANC” 45 times. He typed the word “DA” only 14 times.
4. His #1 reason for not voting Cope is because “Cope is comprised of ex-members of the ANC … ”
5. I think the last words in his piece sum it all up nicely, “The ANC in government has been a monumental disappointment. That is why I will vote DA in 2009”.

I think this piece should have been titled “Why nobody should vote for the ANC”. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. In fact, when I read it again, I pretended that that’s what the title was and I found that the piece made a whole lot more sense then. And whether I agree with Grant’s assessments of the ANC or not is neither here nor there. I don’t attach too much value to my own subjective opinions, which is why I dispense them as casually as I do.

I am a natural-born pessimist so I do not imagine that Grant would ever fess up to the truth. The Silwane version of the truth in any case — the fact that his piece was about the ANC and not the DA. And that is where the Grantmockery ends.

But there is a bigger picture here. A few weeks ago, Siyabonga Ntshingila contributed a post on these very pages titled “Haters on my mind”. Coincidentally, I was busy writing a similar piece titled “The ANC has failed the youth”. Aaaaarrrrggghhhhh!!! Somebody save us from ANC analysis, PLEASE!

There is this one-dimensional view that highlighting the ANC’s failures equates to amplifying one’s own strengths. No it doesn’t. There might be unintended consequences. People hear this and may go with:

1. Yeah, the ANC is screwing up. Stuff it, I ain’t voting then.
2. Hmmm, good points. So, ANC, how are you going to fix this?
3. You’re all ANC haters!!! ANC lives, ANC leads!!!

This may seem like a far-out idea to most people but the electorate is not a bunch of complete nitwits. Not entirely. It does not take too much brainpower for a man living in the squalor of an informal settlement to connect the dots between his empty stomach and the failure of the ANC government to stimulate an environment conducive to job creation. I would personally venture that perhaps opposition parties, instead of shooting off their mouths about matters they only understand at an intellectual level, perhaps they should zip it up and do more listening. A resident of the Cyril Ramaphosa squatter camp would put most analysts to shame with his breakdown of where the government was coming up short. Standing on a soapbox and yelling anti-ANC slogans is a classical case of preaching to the converted.

“Yeah, but then your Cyril Ramaphosa resident turns around and votes the same ANC back into power”, I heard you say? That sums up the incredibly lazy attitude of most opposition politicians (read: anti-ANC rabid, frothing-at-the-mouth individuals). Campaigning against the ANC is not the same thing as campaigning for the DA/UDM/ID/Cope/IFP/ACDP. One approach is reactive, the other proactive. One is negative, the other is positive. One is a waste of time, the other is effective.

If I had a Zim dollar for every time I heard someone say, “I am unhappy with the ANC but, eish, what is the alternative?”, I’d be able to afford bread in Bulawayo. “What is the alternative?” Is it me or is this not the most ridiculous thing you ever heard? Thirty parties have registered nationally. That means that (theoretically at least) this is a buffet with 29 alternatives. Yet, people still lament the lack of alternatives. Oh, I know, it’s because they are sheep with an advanced case of herd mentality, the pathologically lazy “alternatives” will bleat.

Excuse my Swahili but get the eff outta here! The reason people voted ANC in 18 of the 21 seats in the last by-elections is the same reason the ANC got its two-thirds in the last general elections. While opposition parties fiddled with rabid anti-ANC slogans, the ANC looked the people in the eye and promised them a better future. You could waste your energy arguing how that makes them sheeple for believing that crap but, guess what, it’s easy to believe. Do you know why? Because the ANC has a “connection” with this electorate. It is a bond that will not be broken by badmouthing the ANC because this bond is familial in nature. And nobody knows anybody’s failings more than his kin.

To approach elections in a country with our history using textbook Tories-take-on-Labour tactics is an attempt at pretending that pre-1994 never happened. And that, I fear, seems to be the wishful, middle-class thinking that dominates opposition politics. Folks, it did happen. Unless you once slept on the floor in your own house with SDUs being the only barrier between you and the “third force”, you will never get it. It seems to me that the trick here is not to try and break the bond between kinsfolk. The trick is to establish your own separate, alternative bonds with the people. People have more than just one plug point. Find those points. That’s the only way of presenting people with real options come election time.

I do not doubt for a second that the DA, the ID, the UDM, the ACDP or the IFP etc have great policies. In fact, I am very open to the possibility that they might do a significantly better job than the ANC. If I didn’t believe this I would have to believe that there is something inherently superior within the boys in green, black and gold. That would make me no better than your average Chiefs or Pirates supporter. I just wish they would stop wasting my time telling me about the failures of a party I have voted for four times. Yes I have. If this is a revelation to you, then you haven’t read my first book. Go and get it.

When Grant uses 1 379 words to tell me how bad the ANC is, all I hear is “You probably voted for the ANC out of ignorance and without too much thought. Here, let me enlighten you”. I submit that I’m not alone in this. Perhaps, instead of using 680 words to tell me about the DA he should be using all 2 351 words to enlighten me about the great DA. Trust me, I know all about the ANC, warts and all. I could write a book about the ANC’s failures. But similarly I could write a book about some of the ANC’s achievements. But by being so brief and obscure about his party of choice, I believe he has lost an opportunity. I don’t think that the ends of democracy have been served.

It is akin to a stranger warning you of the inherent danger in running towards a friend who is holding a stick when his own hands are hidden behind his back.

I’m afraid I still don’t know why I should vote for the DA. Time is running out.

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