Voting Against Your Own Best Interests

Everybody knows that Jacob Zuma is a corrupt asshole. This is not simply an opinion or political position. This is a given. There are court rooms full of evidence.

Some will defend him because he heads the party that they support. Only a very small minority of people actually believe he is a good leader. Fewer still actually believe that he is a decent human being. But he is the head of the ANC and that is the party of Nelson Mandela.

The ANC won the elections with a safe enough majority since most South Africans blindly support the ANC. But it was the smallest majority they have ever received, which is especially interesting when you consider that this was the first election after Mandela’s death. The nostalgia of the Mandela years likely increased support. So we can assume that were he still alive the ANC would have won with an even smaller majority.

What annoys me the most is that people who loathe Zuma still vote ANC. They vote ANC because it was Mandela’s party a long time ago. It is like Americans who vote Republican because that was Lincoln’s party. But Jacob Zuma is no Nelson Mandela. Not even close. Nobody is and it might be unfair to hold any current politician to that standard. But Zuma is the exact opposite of Mandela when it comes to corruption, theft, extortion, violence, rape, saying crazy shit. South Africa will likely never have another leader like Nelson Mandela. But we deserve a lot better than Jacob Zuma.

In a standard parliamentary system you can vote for a party and hope that the party chooses a different leader. Though more often than not you know who that person will be long before you vote. In South Africa’s system there is no way you can vote ANC without Zuma being president. If you vote ANC you are voting for Zuma, no matter how corrupt you know him to be.

The good news is that ANC support is slowly slipping and the DA is slowly growing. Educated people tend to vote DA, which forces the DA to choose better leaders. Unfortunately, uneducated people tend to vote ANC, which allows corrupt assholes to take control. Uneducated people also tend to believe whatever the party of Mandela tells them, such as the DA being a white party. It will never matter that most DA supporters are black. Simply telling uneducated South Africans that a white party even stands a chance of leading the country again is like telling Americans that a Muslim party might win. Fear and ignorance are the ANC’s best hope.

Ask the man on the street why he voted ANC and he will either tell you that it is Mandela’s party, they do not want whites to take over, or that the ANC are giving them all their welfare benefits. What too many people fail to admit is that ANC corruption has directly led to an economic culture that requires so many welfare programmes. Even a cursory look at the Western Cape and what the DA have done shows you that their economic policies are far better for everybody. The ANC will give you four fish and take back ten. The DA will teach you how to catch your own fish.

South Africans love to complain about the economy, crime, unemployment, hazardous working conditions, government corruption, police brutality. As they should. But then they vote for the party that supports, encourages and more often than not controls the most negative aspects of life in what should be a great place to live.

South Africa is not especially prone to major natural disasters. It does not lie in a challenging climate or geographic region. It is almost topographically perfect. It has more than enough natural resources to not only sustain itself but also sell to neighbouring countries. The problems of South Africa are entirely made by man. And almost all of them can be traced back to greed and domination. This is not what Mandela wanted.