Official release of AEC election document
Activists from the Western Campaign Anti-Eviction Campaign have created the following checklist to clear things up a bit for people who are considering whether or not to vote in this year’s elections.
The issues profiled in the document:
- Privatisation
- Land reform and land occupations
- Participation through direct democracy
- Ending unemployment
- Housing
Party politics is notorious for obscuring the important issues in favour of fear-mongering, coming up with vague slogans such as ‘hope’ and ‘change’, and focusing on the personal lives of other party’s leaders. The goal in creating this document is to take on the issues that matter most to poor communities and to show exactly where the political parties stand.
While only being released to the media on election day, it has already been used for a number of weeks as part of our No Land! No House! No Vote! Campaign and has already had an impact on activists throughout our communities. The refusal of Delft residents to vote is a clear sign that AEC communities are looking past party politics and directly at issues such as participation, privatisation and how to get rid of the housing backlog.
The Anti-Eviction Campaign maintains that the key statistic to look at pending the outcome of today’s election is not what percentage of the national vote the ANC gets. Rather, when all is said and done, the question to ask is what percentage of the voting age population actually supports the ANC. While the ANC won almost 70% of the vote in the 2004 elections (giving it a super-majority in parliament), only 58% of those who could vote actually did so and just 38% of the entire voting population voted for the ANC.
Choosing not to vote is not apathy. It is us, as the poor, flexing our muscle and saying: what have your parties ever done for us? We will change South Africa in spite of you!
For comment please call Ashraf at 076 186 1408
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