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Thinking about voting as an elite..

The election campaigning has officially ended; whoever is still convincing is now clutching the proverbial straws. The country's political parties have spoken, promised, and even lied to us as a society. We are now transparent about who we will vote for, including if we will vote. 

 

As a people, we have been immersed in a political environment for the past thirty weeks, bombarded with messages that one party is superior to the other. The underlying bias in these messages has been the failure of the governing party and the potential benefits of reducing its influence to less than 50%, thereby instigating a coalition government. This narrative has been so potent that it has challenged the elite to question their allegiance to a post-apartheid state as defined in RSA's Constitution, threatening their identities as ethical and thoughtful individuals. 

 

Our general association with the liberation promise in the Constitution, which, as an elite, we know cannot be readily dissociated with the liberation movement complex the ANC has led, was put under severe stress. We started to self-identify as progressive, well-intentioned, and open-minded people outside our complicity with the elite consensus we might be beneficiaries. Our outrage at what was exposed in the media, which we knew and never acted on, was to position ourselves as people who never participated. Our appetite to be on the good side of the good/bad binary prevented us as thinkers from engaging in critical discussions, understanding, and acknowledging, including challenging our role and collusion in what was becoming the reason to spoil the proverbial post-liberation party. 

 

As the economy's structure, the templates of socioeconomic dominance, and the consequences of years of exclusion become increasingly evident in RSA's national psyche, the elite's role in advocating for social and economic justice becomes more crucial. Knowing that our settlement was a product of systemic compromises, the illusion of liberation victory has rendered us a politically vulnerable group, the historically excluded and currently accommodated elite. Any discussions of radical transformation or its equivalents are met with discomfort and intolerance from those upholding the status quo. Our vulnerability, as 'the mind of society', has at best sparked resentment, denial of context, and withdrawal from the transformation discourse. The wealth disparity, the root of our vulnerability, has severely hampered our ability to advocate for social and economic justice. 


From this vulnerability, a sense of weariness has crept in. The elite's experience of economic exclusion, as evidenced by c-suite and equivalent statistics, permeates multiple levels-interpersonal, institutional, structural, and internalised. The result has been a tendency to accept power being bestowed upon them through others, a concept often referred to as 'empowerment '. Unless there is a collective determination to alter this narrative, current strategies will continue to view the historically excluded elite as a socio-economic and transformation subject or problem rather than addressing the entrenched economic exclusion and domination templates and systems. 


For the elite, the 2024 National and Provincial elections are not just another political event. They represent a crucial opportunity to address the templates of economic domination or, at the very least, maintain the status quo until the next social revolution corrects the CODESA settlement gaps. Despite the relative tolerability of elite life under the current socio-economic system, they have had to grapple with being a market to be changed and not serviced, an intellectual constituency to be othered or ostracised, and a component of humanity whose rights are always referenced to what it fought for. 


So, in this election, what would make sense for any thinker? For as long as it was known, the governing party has advocated for congruence with the people’s will to be what earns anyone the authority to govern. It has also bequeathed what defines its right of existence to the whole of the territory of South Africa, its people, and its institutions. This it did by ensuring that its monumental documents form the basis of a post-1994 new South Africa. The country's Constitution has since 1996 become a terrain or a means with which the National Democratic Revolution could be legally executed. The idea of a National Democratic Society whose vision elements are already chiselled into the Constitution through its defined rights protection posture is the end state of what the Constitution envisages for RSA.


To this effect, there is no reason for voting any other way except to return the ANC to political power. The renewal program of the ANC already acknowledges that the public power society borrows at regular intervals is not to be taken for granted or managed as a monotheistic construct, with leaders assuming a form of God-like demeanour. I will be voting for the African National Congress again. The true discontents my class position and expectations have about the ANC are lightweight when juxtaposed with what has been done for society.

As a post-apartheid elite, many of us are Tentswalos. We have risen from our Hector Pieterson status and yet allowed ourselves to be carried by Mbuyisa Makhubos of a special type. I am prepared to do so, fully aware that my elite status privilege is a direct result of the persistent templates of socioeconomic domination. On the 29th of May 2024, my vote will once again be my contribution to posterity, the only portion of the future I might not know about South Africa that will be under my singular control. I am committed to not failing in the next five years. There is no task more urgent for social justice beyond my generation in these elections than ensuring that South Africa’s current templates of socioeconomic dominance are the last. And without infringing on your inalienable right to choose the party of your choice, I am announcing to you what should be my secret.


I HAVE BEEN VOTING FOR THE LIBERAL ORDER WHICH OUR CONSTITUTIONAL ORDER IS ALL ABOUT. 


THE ANC IS ITS BEST CUSTODIAN TO DATE. 


I AM VOTING THE ANC FOR YET ANOTHER TERM. CUT!!!


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