To Colleague
The liberation struggle has brought "freedom". The freedom brought in a form of democratic processes that has made most of us vote for our prefered party to lead us to the promised land of "freedom". Our voting system is that of represantative government, the party with the most votes always has the last say in parliament, e.g, the scorpion saga, the prefered constitutional judges, the shabir scandal just to name a few. We vote for the party and the party choose their prefered candidates into government and parastatals positions like your SABC, your SAA and many more. The loophole in our democratic system is such that if those the party has rewarded with positions are not perfoming as required, only the party leaders can remove them. And the party leader is always pushing the interests of the ruling party, so mostly the interests of the people are last on the Agenda. His opinions and beliefs are sometimes compromised for the sake of the party. It is said that its a team sport, but only the influential determines the goals of the so-called team. These are the same people who has somehow find a way to our universities, propagating equality, inclusivity when it suits them. Having politicians deciding what is best for us ordinary people has its price. They have to fill their pockets and those of their relatives and friends before they come to us. They push policies that failed elsewhere because they owe other people at our expense, e.g, OBE. The problem with this is that our learners can't read nor write their own languages let alone English. Then people wonder why Educators want to be spoon fed at tertiary level. Is there a way out of this democratic process of represantative party election systems? Think about this, can someone you appointed into a high position be fully objective when it comes to you? Just blowing off some steam.
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The representative form of governance applied in SA is one form of perpetuating corruption and nepotism, because like you justly put it, appointed cronies will always subjectively align themselves with the view/opinion of those that appointed them as "you pat my back, I pat yours". Let citizens votes for candidates; and this will require "potential candidates" to participate in meaningful debates about policy issues, where the public and the media will be afforded an opportunity to interrogate those policies. This lead me to...
ReplyDeleteSouth Africans are electorally illiterate, sentimental voters, furthermore the IEC is not helping in the manner in which they advocate 'your vote is your secret'. People need to be informed about the dangers of overwhelmingly voting for one party, as this encourage one-party state and gives the ruling party the power to make amends on the constitution. Americans love Obama, but they can't risk giving him two-thirds majority, as this is suicidal; their election results are almost always at 51% to 49% or 52% to 48%. In SA, People vote for the party because it is predominantly 'black' or 'white', less concern or intensive engagement on policy issues, be it education, health, economic, social development, etc.
The multi-party strategy applied also ensure that the opposition doesn't amass substantial votes to be a credible opposition that will act as a 'watch-dog' to the ruling party, as votes are always scattered between this insignificant smaller parties, like KISS Party, Women's Front, etc. A maximum of FIVE political parties in SA will help eradicate the pomposity, sluggish service delivery, and corrupt tendencies of the ruling party, because failure to perform most certainly signal the demise of the ruling party.
With the current trend, appointment of people to key or influencial positions in parastatals will be subjected to ruling party affiliates, thus compromising acquisition of adeqautely skilled people, irrespective of their political affiliation, to hold those position.
Let our votes be based on thourough engagement of policies, and not sentimental...