Your vote makes a difference

I logged onto facebook this morning to catch up on some news, see how some friends are doing and to like a status or two and two things caught my attention:

1 - another one of my facebook friends started catching pokemon and

2 - people were barting of their mini brand items from checkers so that they would no longer have duplicated items.

I never thought I would get to a point in life where I would see people writing things such as "I will give you my sunlight liquid if you give me your weetbix". However, here we are, prioritizing pokemon and checkers mini toys and avoiding one of the biggest things that will be taking place in our country this year; yes that's right, its time to go to the polls for the municipal elcections again.

Its time to have your say and make your mark, voting season is upon us and I must admit that I have been rather fascinated by the rallies and speeches that many political parties have been producing this year. Some of the statements made me laugh so much I began crying while other statements made me realise that we are living in a country that is in dire need of great leaders. If you, like me, love following politics you will understand the reason for my previous statement. It made me think, what makes a great leader, and so, I googled the definition of a leader. According to google: "a leader is a person who influences a group of people towards the achievement of a goal". Powerful isn't it? Leaders are your biggest influence in life, be it negatively or positively. If you have a great leader at work, one who leads by example and who practices what he/she expects of others then that leader is positively affecting the lives of sometimes 50 to 100 people but if that leader does the opposite of what he/she expects of you then he/she can single handedly destroy the vision of a company. Likewise, look at our country, in order for us to be a country that flourishes in every aspect so that we can compete healthily with the rest of the world we need a great and mighty leadership team that comprises of people that have impeccable work ethic and integrity. Sounds great? Yeah, I thought so too and then it hit me, I have the power to choose the leadership that influences my life. See, this is different than at work. When we go for interviews at the workplace, we never get to question the type of leadership we will be serving under. We are asked how we will make a difference but we never ask if our leaders will make a positive impact in our lives and so 6 months to a year down the line we find ourselves saying things like; "that person is a tyrant" "they make my life hell" "what am I even doing here" but choosing leadership for our country is different, the choice is ours! We are in control of who leads us yet so many of us choose not to vote. Basically, if I had R10 for every time someone told me that their vote wont make a difference, I could probably take 10 of my closest friends out for a very fancy dinner and still have some change left over for data.

I have been thinking about this topic for a while trying to figure out why people don't care about their future anymore, and when I say future I mean the generations that are still to come after you. I couldn't make any sense of it until I was on holiday in Durban about two weeks ago and I used an uber cab to go somewhere. Being someone that cant sit in complete silence for more than 10 minutes I decided to speak to the uber driver. We spoke about everything from God to our career choices and then we parked off at politics. I asked him if he was voting this year and without hesitation he said "probably not". I kept quiet for a minute and then followed with a very shaky "why" and so he explained. He said that he knows that its important to vote and like me he also wants to have his say but what he cant figure out is who to vote for. He went on to say that change is necessary and that he believes that we cant keep living in turmoil but the problem is; one party, though they have taken us out of wretched apartheid, they still live there - fighting a fight that should have ended over 20 years ago and the other parties keep telling us what everyone else is doing wrong and not what they can do right. He went on to ask me, "how do you choose from there?" Wow, I wasn't prepared for that. I was ready tear apart his, its my day off explanation but he had some valid points. We continued talking and I must admit I got to my destination a little confused about my vote and my mark that I will be making. I spent some time reading up on some of the parties after that conversation trying to figure out who deserved my vote.

Here is my opinion; living in freedom is vital, captivity is the harshest sentence one can have upon ones life and I think as a south African I have always been so grateful for Tata Nelson Mandela and the fight that he fought. If I must be honest, I chose to take history as a subject in school based purely on who Nelson Mandela was. He is and always will be someone whom I look up to; its not easy to put your whole life on hold so that other people can live their lives in freedom. It must take some special courage to be that selfless. The bible teaches us about being selfless through Jesus and all that He had to overcome on the cross so that we could live in freedom. In Philippians 2:4 it says "let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also the interest of others" and I believe that Nelson Mandela lived according to that scripture by putting the interests of the people first. As grateful as I am though, its impossible to ignore where our country stands right now. We have Nkandla and the pay back the money issue, petrol and food prices sky rocketing, the infamous e tolls that we have to pay, load shedding and playing dodge the pothole every time we drive on our roads. There are serious problems such as unemployment, murder, theft, rape, homeless people, people living in informal settlements and lets not forget corruption, greed and power to name but a few yet no solutions. Surely, we cant keep blaming the past for whats happening 20 years later down the line. Also, I don't believe that some of the statements made by President Zuma can be ignored either. I wont go down memory lane but if anything it should be mandatory for any president to be able to read out a number, its not okay for half of parliament to be sleeping during an address and never ever ever should the finance minister be chopped out of his job over night. All things, that have happened within the last 10 months, I for one find that a bitter pill to swallow. Here's the thing though, if not the current party then who? The EFF seems to be in battle with themselves, I am still trying to figure out why Julius Malema wears a red overall to parliament but a R60 000 suit to a dinner party (I stand to be corrected, his suit may have been more expensive) and as for the DA, they have good policies and some of their ideas of change are brilliant but if people within ones organisation are freely promoting racial separation then what more is left to be said? So, three of the biggest parties running at polls on Wednesday have qualities within them that are left to be desired - none of them are perfect and none of them will ever be but that should not stop us from exercising a right that so many people fought to have.

What am I trying to say here? August 3rd 2016 is two days away and whether we like it or not the future of our country, our financial status and the future of our children rests with our choices. If you choose not to vote, not only are you hurting the future of the country you live in but you are hurting the opportunities that a single vote could create for thousands of other people. After my conversation with the uber driver, my policy research and some common sense I came to the realisation that who one votes for is a personal choice based on the values that one has built within them but it is imperative to vote. A person with integrity and morals will choose a leadership party that emulates the same qualities. A person who believes in ruffling a few feathers and tearing things apart just to bring it together will in turn choose a party that emulates those qualities and so on and so forth. What is the right decision though? For me, the right decision is knowing that the choice I make when I cast my vote is positively affecting the people I love and the country I live in. Most of all its about knowing that whoever I choose to represent me as a leader represents the values and integrity that God represents because personally I believe that a leadership that stands for God is a leadership worth being under.

Until next time - remember that a person who stands for nothing will fall for everything!

Loshnee

Comments

[TJ Petje]

I agree with most of this. There are however a few things I do not, as with all people, we are not the same. What struck me the most, however, is that we speak of policies of parties during this election. I think most of us are forgetting what this election is about. This election is not about policies of a party, that election is in 2019. This election is about who will fight for you and I at counsel level to get us services. Even if DA wins City of Tswane, for example, they still will not have the power to inact policy, essentially, they will still be following the policy of the ruling party but the difference is that they will have the power to decide who gets services, tenders, etc. So we are voting for governance and in my opinion, we should be looking at which party will be able to provide for those. I have looked at this and sadly none of the top 3 do it for me. In the urban areas, DA is by far the best in service delivery. Just look at Midvaal and City of Cape Town but where DA lacks, is providing services in the locations. Gugulethu as an example. The ANC, no need to go into them, we experience their "service Delivery" daily. The EFF, many may claim have no track record but all we have to do is remember Limpopo. We just have to remember the Power that Julius Malema wielded in the province and how it eventually went into administration because of the maladministration conducted by the CIC and his cronies.