SA Rocks

The SA Blog Awards nomination period is almost coming to a close. Now don’t get ahead of yourself and become all SA Blog Awarded out, cause that would suck.

There is still another round of voting that needs to take place. The second round is more simple, you simply click and vote for the nominee that you think should win the various awards that are up.

But for now what you need to do is follow this link and vote for SA Rocks as the SA Blog of the Year.

Popularity: 13% [?]

This is an extremely tricky and sensitive debate to have. I think that there are many heated opinions held by people who still feel strongly about their country of birth (South Africa). This feeling clearly leads them to feel some ownership of SA and the countries ruling party.

But I am not so sure.

I firmly believe that South Africans living abroad temporarily on short term (1-4 year) Visa’s – or whatever the time period is, should be allowed to vote. I firmly disagree with expats who have formally left the country indefinitely who want to vote. If you choose to leave a country and have no intention of contributing to the economy, the social upliftment, the every running of the nation then you unfortunately waver the right to vote.

Come back if you want to vote that badly. But don’t leave and then claim to still love the nation and want to make a difference. If you are on a gap year, if you are on a working visa, if you are on an extended holiday then by all means vote, in fact I think the government owes it to citizens who intend on returning to provide a platform (at SA embassies the world over) for these people to vote.

As far as I am aware there are ± 143 political parties which would make the next elections the biggest since 1994. There is something in the air this year, there is change in the people, the masses are taking back the ownership of their days. It started with Obama and hopefully wont end any time soon. Hopefully that dog, Mugabe will be the next to be ousted.

Popularity: 7% [?]

My recent DA blog post sparked some very interesting, strange and debatable points. The one that intrigues me the most right now (and probably for the next 6 months) is voter education. Below is a comment I published as a response to someone asking me to “convince them to vote”. Firstly I am really shocked and surprised that I need to convince anyone to vote, but this is my response however rushed and off the top of my head:

Basically, you can tell me that the parties are all failures, all liars, all cheats, bigots or whatever you think but at the end of the day they aren’t all like that. They do some very promising work and actually do (alot of the time) try to better the public. You can moan and tell me that your area has had a pothole for two weeks, yes but so have many others.

The reason that you should vote is very simple: Democracy is based on a voting system. If you do not vote then you are allowing a party in to government that actually isn’t representative of the people, but rather a small faction of the people. Our democracy would be in a much better working order – especially with a proportional representation system – if more people voted, votes were fought for and people held their governments and political parties to task with their vote. But right now the parties know that all they need is roughly 8million votes to win an election. It’s apathetic voters that allow parties and politicians to get away with murder.

Imagine if the ANC completely lost the next elections because the people weren’t happy with their outcomes. That would send a message to every party out there that South Africans want results. But in fact, the message we send is: “Ah, you know, you screwed up but I don’t really care enough to tell you with my vote and help educate others to vote so you can take power again and carry on in the same way.”

Voting matters. You can deny it until you die but the fact is that voting matters.

Popularity: 9% [?]

That is more votes than were cast in the 2004 government elections.

That is a very sad, sad fact.

No wonder politics is in a funny way in SA. More people are willing to vote for something that will never affect their lives than they are to vote for a president.

Popularity: 2% [?]