Vernon Wagner, Lotus River
Without its primary colours in place there is no rainbow, and South Africa’s Rainbow Nation is in danger of disintegrating if our unique diversities are not acknowledged, respected and honestly celebrated.
Similarly, any disrespect shown to our proportional representation electoral system should be regarded as a form of power-grabbing.
Certain democratic measures taken to create and sustain our equal society opened us up to even more systemic abuse by a broader stream of habitual offenders and ruthless operators. The victims, as always, the innocent, poor and ignorant among us.
However, all is not lost, especially not if we band together to protect not only the right of our eligible citizens to vote, but also the value of every single vote cast. The primary need of any electorate is effective voter education, not food parcels or a promise of housing, and every signatory party to the Electoral Code of Conduct commits itself to promote and support efforts towards addressing this need. Every vote counts, and any party that implies otherwise is guilty of fear mongering and deceitful electioneering tactics.
With the Democratic Alliance’s betraying of ordinary South Africans’ democratic ideals and expectations, and by virtue of its record of being either incapable or too arrogant to honour its alliance agreements, the DA is a veritable contradiction in terms. Consider its call to not vote for a “smaller party” — thereby supposedly strengthening the
ANC, therefore constituting a “wasted vote” — and it becomes only too obvious that the real small party in political South Africa
is, in fact, the Democratic Allicance.