The ballot is stronger than the barricade

I recently looked back at some election results. Earlier in the year, the Democratic Alliance (DA) clung onto a Pretoria West seat by three votes in a Tshwane by-election in the nation’s capital. Had the African National Congress (ANC) won that by-election, it would have marched forward to this election with a lot more momentum.

That DA win gave the party’s activists in Pretoria a lot of encouragement. I remember in the early 2000s, the ANC beat the DA by four votes in a Stellenbosch by-election to win a seat off the DA.

We should be cynical. So many of our politicians who have the privilege of being elected to council, provincial legislature, and parliament don’t go beyond the call of duty to serve the country or their constituents. Too many try to enrich themselves rather than bringing good to the areas where they live. Many of our cities and towns look jaded.

Many South Africans believe more can be achieved through blocking the roads and shutting down the cities or towns. Politicians running for office rarely if ever honour their electoral promises. The minute they are elected, they are perceived to disappear. Thus, a service delivery protest can be far more beneficial than begging the councillor to do the job.

Earlier this year, taxi drivers and farmers worked together in the Free State town of Ficksburg to block the road to prevent trucks from passing to and from the Lesotho border to protest against the deteriorating road conditions.

We saw similar nation-building activity in Koster in the North West, where a cross section of local residents and farmers were given permission by the courts to resuscitate the collapsed water and sewerage supply and run these key plants for the municipality. We saw it after the July insurrection, when residents of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng took to the streets with brooms and bin bags to clean the areas which were devastated by the looting.

If the state, province, and municipalities cannot protect our businesses, manage our water supply, or maintain our roads, then why should we vote? We can and will sort things out for ourselves. We don’t need to rely on the police to protect our families and businesses. We’ll buy a generator and put up a JoJo tank. There’s no point in voting as it will make no difference. We’ll do our best to protect our family and our community and won’t bother ourselves with the continued decline of our ward and city.

For me, national and provincial elections can often feel like a version of The Emperor’s New Clothes. There are grandiose plans, ambitious policies relating to finance, the economy, and foreign affairs. They could easily be mistaken for a charade. Local government, by contrast, is much more tangible. This has to do with your weekly refuse collection, water supply, the roads in your neighbourhood, and the upkeep of your park. Effective local government allows our community to leave the comforts of our home, synagogue, communal institution, and favourite shopping centre and allows us to become citizens. We are more likely to use public spaces and more likely to collaborate with people from different backgrounds to us.

Who are we voting for?

The Independent Electoral Commission has made copies of your ballot available for inspection on its website. Open Cities Lab has created an app which does the same but also tells you how old the candidate is and whether they are standing in only one ward. For instance, in ward 73, (Houghton Norwood), 36-year-old Bhekinkosi Mchunu is running for the KwaZulu-Natal based Justice and Employment Party. He’s also standing in 134 other wards. I wonder how much he knows about my ward and its challenges, and hope residents of other wards would have the same concerns.

I notice that the African Christian Democratic Party’s candidate, the 49-year-old Bronwyn Kassen, is more modest in her run for office. She is running in my ward and is on the ballot in Florida in the west of the city, Craighall Park, and Bryanston Bordeaux. I implore you to do research on the candidates on your ballot, and see whether they live in your area and whether they understand what the critical issues will be over the next five years.

You will be getting two ballot papers if you live in a metro (major city). The second ballot is the proportional ballot. Think carefully which party will best represent you, your concerns, and your aspirations over the next five years.

Your mood might be down, you are jaded by too many disappointments. However, Monday is a public holiday. Take your family, take a book, and go stand in line with the residents of your neighbourhood. Stop and look at all the party volunteers trying for one last time to get your attention and remind you why you should vote for them.

When you step into that ballot box on Monday, know that as per the Pretoria West and Stellenbosch example, your vote can indeed make a difference. Know that you are voting because you do care about your ward and city being better over the next five years rather than at best remaining in its current state or at worst sliding backwards.

Know that your vote can be the difference between an energetic candidate on the proportional ballot getting elected or not. Your vote could possibly be the one which ensures that a key coalition partner gets an additional say in the stewardship of the city. Let’s all go out and vote and celebrate the potential of our wards and cities.

• Wayne Sussman writes on elections for ‘Daily Maverick’.