Voters+are+being+hoodwinked,+Khathu+Mamaila,+City+Press

City Press, Johannesburg, 04/02/2006 18:28 - (SA)
=Voters are being hoodwinked=


 * KHATHU MAMAILA : THIRD EYE**

//**People have the right to know in whose hands they place their future**//

IN ZIMBABWE they called it the donkey phenomenon. It was said that in some areas the ruling Zanu-PF was so popular that the party could put up a donkey as its election candidate and the ass would trounce the opposition Movement for Democratic Change candidate.

This is the kind of arrogance that power tends to breed. A political party can be so confident of its support that it can treat voters with utter contempt. There may not even be a need for any real effective campaign. Worse still, voters may not be told who the mayors will be.

And the ANC has decided that it would announce its five executive mayors after the election. Voters are expected to sign a blank cheque for the ANC. You vote ANC, and the party will then tell you whom you voted for. What a creative way of smuggling unpopular party demagogues into key positions!

There may be a serious argument why the ANC has opted to keep its mayoral candidates a "classified" secret. In the finalisation of the list of candidates, comrades were at each other's throats trying to elbow one another from the list. Regional conferences were held and popular leaders were elected in their order of popularity. However, in typical Stalinist approach - the leadership knows what is best for the masses - the lists were changed.

Some people who were not on the lists were introduced and others had their names dropped. The tampering of the lists triggered a national revolt that saw hundreds of ANC members opting to stand as independent candidates in direct challenge to the duly elected ANC candidate.

Against this background, the party leaders chose a safe option. The mayors would only be announced after the election. The assumption is that ANC supporters will vote for the party and will not be influenced by whether they endorse their particular candidate as executive mayor.

The ANC can argue that in any event, the party is a collective organisation and that whoever is in power will be implementing ANC policy anyway. The question of who becomes the mayor is irrelevant, the ANC would want the voters believe.

But that is not the whole truth. As much as people vote for the ANC, they still want to know who will be president beforehand. Putting more emphasis on the party than on the leader assumes that all leaders have equal capacity. This is simply not true. The country under President Thabo Mbeki is a very different place than what it would have been under a president Ndaweni Mahlangu. That they both come from the ANC and had imbibed all the traditions of the party would not change that reality.

Ideally, voters should be able to vote directly for a particular candidate. If this was allowed, voters would be empowered to choose the candidate that best represents their aspirations. This is why the constituency-based system is preferred to the party system at local government. A councillor directly appointed by the voters is likely to be more responsive to their wishes. He who pays the piper calls the tune. If the candidate is a party appointee, then his main objective is to advance the interests of the party. These interests do no always coincide as the Jacob Zuma debacle has shown. Sometimes what is good for the party is not good for the country.

Another weakness of the system that denies voters from voting directly for their candidates is the floor-crossing legislation that allows councillors to change parties between elections. Now we have parties such as Nadeco and the UIF in Parliament that nobody voted for. They don't have to account to anybody.

The bigger issue that must concern all patriots is the need to ensure that we do not sterilise democracy in our country. It is not a good sign of a vibrant democracy that only 48 percent participated in the local government elections five years ago.

The interests in politics should not be weakened. Veiling the executive mayors and only showing off their faces after the election is certainly not the best way of keeping the masses interested in the politics. The voters should be allowed the right to distinguish an ass from a popular and capable community leader.


 * From: http://www.news24.com/City_Press/Columnists/0,7515,186-1695_1875358,00.html**

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