Voting?

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FlatspinZA

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I had a long chat with the petrol pump attendant while I was filling up on Saturday. He's completely disillusioned with the government, and because of this he is not voting in the next election. I told him that he has to vote, for anyone else but the ANC, but I don't think he understands the concept.

This is not the first time I have heard this, and each time I give my schpiel about the power of an opposition party I get blank stares. I think we, as educated people, need to start spreading the message that even if the ANC continues to be in power, the more opposition we have to that power, the better chance we'll have of SA coming right, eventually.
 
It's like there is some blockage in the thinking of people like the one you described above. They may decide not to vote ANC, but stubbornly refuse to consider any alternative.
 
The more you would try to educate them about the opposition the more the ANC emotionally blackmails them, e.g. using the ancestors.
 
Well I'm not surprised. For most older uneducated people, voting == ANC. You can't blame them either. Most of them were already well in their adult lives when they voted for the first time in 1994 and yet had never voted before. To them the whole concept of voting is synonymous with the ANC.
 
Why do some people love to generalise?

I've been speaking to a petrol attendant for months and learned that he had matric. He is in his 20's. So don't assume everyone is uneducated.
 
Nothing will change in this generation or the next, forget it. Maybe within 4 or 5 generations later things will become democraticaly neutral if war hath not broken out yet. It takes time to forget, my granny still hated the english for the anglo-boer war etc.
 
Reminds me of a women that was interviewed on why she moved to Western Cape, to finally get service delivery BUT she'll vote ANC again after she receives delivery from the DA.
Also think that most white people are not very attached to political parties like black people tend to be, I always hear and see more black people discussing politics than their white counterparts.......hell there's a conversation going in the background with my black colleagues as I type this.
 
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Here is a very interesting piece in the Daily Maverick on exactly this phenomena:
Reporter's notebook: The self-limiting politics of the SA people

Even though deciding not to vote is a completely valid democratic right, it is the most inefficient way of 'punishing' the party you are disgruntled with. If I remember correctly (based on the last election results); if everything else stays the same and about 8 million ANC voters do not vote, only then will the DA (closest opposition) and the ANC have an equal share of the votes.
 
AlphaBravo said:
Nothing will change in this generation or the next, forget it. Maybe within 4 or 5 generations later things will become democraticaly neutral if war hath not broken out yet. It takes time to forget, my granny still hated the english for the anglo-boer war etc.
Click to expand...

But by that time we would be so fscked fixing it will take 2-3 lifetimes.
 
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Not that it keeps me from voting personally but really, what difference would it make? If the ANC lost, on a national level that is, there would be backtracking until they won.

Ugh...I'm having one of those days but sometimes it does all seem futile.
 
I am a big fan and supporter of the DA, because I've seen their work and the subsequent related improvements that result, BUT, I have, and have had, a gripe with them for a very long time now...

WHY THE #@%^ DO THEY NOT COMMIT THEMSELVES TO VOTER EDUCATION?!

The story contained within this thread is neither new nor shocking, it's general knowledge, as far as I'm concerned.

"ANC or nothing."

That is many things, mostly lunacy and idiocy, but it stems almost entirely from a lack of [voter] education.

TEACH the ANC-failed people what Democracy is, how it works, what a vote entails and means and how best to use it.

I have traveled across large parts of ZA, some atrocious and some not so, but in a personal capacity, I will confidently tell you that there are very large areas of our country which are inhabited by the predominant type the ANC prey on for blind support. Nothing much has changed in these areas since '94.

Easy pickings for an opposition party...

DA: We know how great you can be, how about actively converting the rest of us now?

NOTE: This actually applies to any and all opposition parties, but the DA were the ones in question and are the largest of the lot.
 
Hemps said:
Also think that most white people are not very attached to political parties like black people tend to be, I always hear and see more black people discussing politics than their white counterparts.......hell there's a conversation going in the background with my black colleagues as I type this.
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For black people, who were 'enslaved' by apartheid, the ANC = freedom.

Because most of them did not have much else, the political party became everything to them and participating in the struggle became all-consuming.

Hence the unquestioning loyalty to the ANC. It is as if they are blind to the fact that the ANC who liberated them, is not the same ANC of today.
 
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ANC or Nothing.

Will not waste my time voting for other small parties.
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Then do the country a favour and follow your second choice, let all your zombie friends know as well, there's a free Mybb shirt in the works if you follow through......
 
Hemps said:
Then do the country a favour and follow your second choice, let all your zombie friends know as well, there's a free Mybb shirt in the works if you follow through......
Click to expand...

I will gladly accept free Mybb shirt, will use it to wash my taxi.
 
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