Spoiling vote dishonours those who died for freedom

THE no vote or spoilt vote call by some prominent former ANC leaders, with impeccable struggle credentials, has received robust rejection from ANC leaders and supporters, and a lukewarm reception from opposition parties. The two main reasons for the call are the Nkandla debacle and the Marikana tragedy.

The Marikana issue is under quasi-judicial investigation by the government-appointed Farlam Commission. Thus pronouncements on it for now are premature, prejudicial and misplaced.

Also comment is dangerous, especially coming from former government leaders who should still be jealously guarding the pious principles of due process and finality.

The Nkandla issue primarily relates to one person, even if he be the president of a state, or was just a sweeper at the Union Buildings. Certainly, the energy for rectification should rather be expended on unseating him and his group, both within the ANC and in parliament, as was done with President Thabo Mbeki in Polokwane.

The whole party (ANC) should not be subjected to the irritatingly stillborn no vote or spoilt vote coup attempt. No party, in a democracy, is about its leadership, who are its servants, but it’s about its members, who are its masters.

Voting is a voluntary act based on individual choice, bad or not, and regardless of party membership, as long as one is a South African citizen of 18 years or more. The call therefore mocks the foundation of democracy which is “the people govern” or “power to the people” practised through vote by choice, not vote by coercion or deception.

Voting by choice, or the principle of free will, is the centrifugal force of the democratic process. The functions and powers of the executive, legislature and judiciary, and the service delivery at local, provincial and national levels, all emanate from the vote by choice.

Parties in parliament are there through the vote by choice in proportion to the voters’ choices properly exercised. This is the will of the people, which is the sole source of the authority of government in a democracy.

The call, also, is as futile as it is presumptuous. The campaigners’ base of operation is overwhelmingly small, the power wielded laughably limited and the time frame screamingly little (only up to May 7 and not beyond).

It is a canon of logic that no one can command power which they do not have.

In conclusion, in view of our painful past, the vote by choice today represents the difference between our apartheid racist past and our free non-racial present. It also represents the steel door that closed off the outbreak of a civil war that nearly engulfed South Africa just before April 27 1994.

We dare not spit at the graves of those who paid the ultimate price for our democracy through mischievous acts of spoiling votes!