Friday, February 03, 2006
Hooray, hooray
I love this country! Local elections on the 1st of March - you know the kind of thing. Only the local politicians are interested and only their immediate family bothers to vote. You typically get a level of turnout that would make a bisexual Muslim punk in Texas look popular.
Anyway, there are clearly certain forces at play. One: the ANC is in power. In a big way. Two: unlike a national election, there is a possibility that the ANC may lose some bits of the country because South Africa is anything but homogeneous. Put simply, all the Zulus are in Durban and all the coloured population is in Cape Town. This means that the Inkatha Freedom Party might win in Durban and the Democratic Alliance might win in Cape Town.
Durban is a fair fight, but in Cape Town, there are broadly three kinds of voters: black, white, and coloured. The white will vote DA, the blacks will vote ANC, and the coloureds will split, tending towards the DA because they are disgruntled at not being black enough, having spent 40 years not being white enough. Roughly speaking, the potential DA voters are richer than the ANC ones, so are more likely to have cars to get to polling stations, and enough control over their working lives to find the time. Problem. Solution: declare the 1st of March a public holiday for this year.
The happy coincidence (and it is a coincidence, unlike with tube strikes) is that it's summer, so we can all go and not vote at the beach. I love this country!
Anyway, there are clearly certain forces at play. One: the ANC is in power. In a big way. Two: unlike a national election, there is a possibility that the ANC may lose some bits of the country because South Africa is anything but homogeneous. Put simply, all the Zulus are in Durban and all the coloured population is in Cape Town. This means that the Inkatha Freedom Party might win in Durban and the Democratic Alliance might win in Cape Town.
Durban is a fair fight, but in Cape Town, there are broadly three kinds of voters: black, white, and coloured. The white will vote DA, the blacks will vote ANC, and the coloureds will split, tending towards the DA because they are disgruntled at not being black enough, having spent 40 years not being white enough. Roughly speaking, the potential DA voters are richer than the ANC ones, so are more likely to have cars to get to polling stations, and enough control over their working lives to find the time. Problem. Solution: declare the 1st of March a public holiday for this year.
The happy coincidence (and it is a coincidence, unlike with tube strikes) is that it's summer, so we can all go and not vote at the beach. I love this country!
