Be sure to vote – the future is in your hands

IN SOUTH Africa, there are 278 municipalities comprising eight metros, 44 districts and 226 local municipalities, that will be contested on November 1 for 10 285 seats by 276 unique political parties.

We are in election mode as the country prepares for hotly contested polls. All the major political parties are preparing to engage in political chicanery unprecedented in our democratic history.

The ANC, a party with an illustrious record and history, is now a pale shadow of its glorious past, and has seen its fabric being torn to pieces by intrigues from the top.

The singing and dancing and clamour becomes more and more untenable in the public eye, with the damaging disclosures unearthed by a multitude of weekly revelations, which point to the elite and the coterie as the source of all excesses.

The party strategists are desperately trying to create a new look with a (no attachments). All letters must contain the writer’s full name, physical address and telephone number. No pen names. fresh daub of populist cosmetics. The political and financial havoc and pain created by those who are immune from accountability has mutilated and decimated the dreams of our Struggle stalwarts.

Money is the root of all politics. Our politics was about passion, imagination and foresight. In today’s bizzare political environment, it’s all about greed, lust for power and malignant accountancy.

In our nation’s political discourse, it is impossible to avoid the smell of cash. Many in our fractured land have become disorientated with the business of politics.

The duplicity, insincerity and condescension is sickening and insulting. It has become necessary for all of us to redefine our democracy because the politics of deceit has demoralised us by substituting false and fake politicians as our saviours, and erodes our political systems.

The race for pole position is in top gear. The five-year ritual has begun in earnest.

Leaders who were absent for the past five years will appear as genies out of the bottle, to win your vote and then disappear and evaporate into the corridors of their cosy offices where they will snooze and hibernate for the next five years.

A rare condition that only infects political office seekers. Many will fall asleep as new laws are being formulated and legalised.

The kind of political speeches all the contesting politicians are repeating at their various emotion-ridden rallies are a cocktail of buffoonery and deception, reminding us of what the great Niccolo Machiavelli once said: “Politics has no relation to morals.”

Today’s crop of political leaders appear to adhere to the tactics of deceit, denial and diversion to manifest an illusion of who they are and what they represent.

Our nation is in a crisis of gargantuan proportions. Bribery, corruption, rampant violent crime, obsolete health care, a scarcity of jobs, housing, land, looting and embezzlement, deprivation of the plebeians, and pauperisation of the masses are some of the pivotal and crucial problems that must be fearlessly tackled by the next elected leaders.

Failure or complacency will send our beloved nation into a hell hole – from which there will be no escape route. Cast your vote for a new democratic South Africa. The future of this generation and the one to follow is in your hands.

This election is the most profound test for the country. Apathy and complaceny will destroy your future.