Around mid-next year we voters should be fine and just like the Stella in the novel our groove will be back. Our stock should rise and nudge blue-chip level. We were served a trailer in recent by-elections. To those still stuck in the pre-millennial phase a trailer is a glean into what is going to happen – a kind of dress rehearsal.
The recent by-elections brought home how important we are going to be round about election time. A few weeks ago, I met one of the candidates for a by-election recently in my village.
This suavely-dressed joined the ATM queue to check his balance. I am assuming he was going to check his balance because as most of us were, as it was mid-month. Also when you are standing for elections you get worried that this constant feeding of people who in the secret of the voting booth vote for your opponents will decimate your account balance.
After greeting us warmly he implored us to cast a vote for him. A vote for what I asked. You have to ask especially in the village because one of the pastimes in the village is voting people into office.
There are always elections in the village. There are elections for the Village Development Committee, Ward Development Committee, Development Trust, burial societies, chiefs, headmen and people to meet uncles during lobola negotiations. My evil mouth enquired if the VDC had run its full cycle which wasn’t a nice thing to say as I was to discover later.
Now politicians don’t like being associated with VDCs mainly because they believe VDCs are people with low literacy levels whose education was basically incidental. Quickly recovering his poise he told us he was standing for a council seat in one part of the village. He was tired of lack of development on his side of the village and the rampant unemployment of the youth.
He was going to right such wrongs. They always say this and I suspect that is what they teach at Campaign School. You just cannot stand for elections unless you are tired of something. The tired-of-something template includes bad roads, unemployment, crime, dark streets and no clinic in the area. The cycle is: candidates get tired of something, they get voted into office, they get tired of speaking out about things they are tired of and eventually people get tired of their inertia and vote them out.
Then another tired guy gets in to be fed through the same wringer. The MPs, councillors, wannabe MPs and wannabe councillors are now becoming friendlier. So expect men in red suits, purple suits, green suits and blue suits to bring back those good old Setswana values of greeting people. And the forked tongue rhetoric is just leaving the maternity ward.
(For comments, feedback and insults email [email protected]) Thulaganyo Jankey is a training consultant who runs his own training consultancy that provides training in BQA- accredited courses. His other services include registering consultancies with BQA and developing training courses. Contact him on 74447920 or email [email protected].
