Zukiswa Wanner

Nuuh. South Africa might be the number one drinking nation in the world (‘so we are finally tops in something?’ one of my friends said. Yep, even if it’s the dubious honour of being number on alcoholics.) but that ain’t the type of party I am talking about. Rather, I am talking of a political party to vote for come 2009.

I am taking this really seriously because that one minute in the voting booth is the ony time I get to feel powerful as a citizen. Kind of sad that my father spent 30 years in exile and all I have to show for his exile is an X once every five years for national elections. Couldn’t he and his comrades have found some way of ensuring that I would be guarding this democracy more seriously by ensuring that I had at least a Pick’n’Pay franchise or something? Ah  well, it is what it is.

And  disillusioned though I am with party politricks, I am still going to vote because, if that’s all my dad manage to get me for his years in exile, the least I can do is use that vote.

Although I am not a card carrying member of any party, since democracy began I have given my vote with blind loyalty, to the A.N.C but with the vindictiveness that the current crop of A.N.C characters seem to have, next year they are not guaranteed my vote.

It is a mere five months to go before elections and this weekend I have been asking whether it was really so tough for them to let Thabo exit with dignity. So come 2009, everyone has to convince me why I should vote for them.

The Democratic Alliance as the leading opposition wisely took advantage of the rifts in the ruling A.N.C and have already started putting election posters up. I noticed in early August that the campaign posters in Hyde Park read ‘join the war on drugs, vote D.A’ (or something similar sounding). In my poor suburb in the south meanwhile, the posters read, ‘join the war against crime, vote D.A.’ clearly they seem to understand the demographics of the places where they put their posters. Hyde Park is an upper middle class neighbourhood and chances are, the greatest problem in that neighbourhood are kids on drugs. Meanwhile in Turffontein (my neighbourhood), the greatest problem is that my clothes are still on the line two hours after I have hung them to dry.

Two points to D.A.

What I don’t get about the D.A though is that in spite of highlights on the news that one of the groups that vote for them the most – white women – are the greatest beneficiaries of B.E.E, the D.A wants to get rid of B.E.E – can you say duh for a party niot understanding its voters! That seems a bit stupid to me. So may be D.A. will not get my vote because like Ndumiso, some of my best friends are white….but I am open to being convinced.

I have also always been a proponent of Pan-Africanism despite my dad and most of my family being Charterists so again my vote  might be given to AZAPO (am disillusioned with the splints and splinters in PAC and Mosibudi has a nice physique). My vote to AZAPO is not because I think it will make a difference to their political fortune, mind you, but because I tend to like intellectuals, and AZAPO people generally are. Now if only they would get it together with the rest of the BCM parties then there really could be some viable opposition to both D.A. and A.N.C.

I might also give my vote to I.F.P for no other reason than that I am a Xhosa girl trying to ruin away from the Xhosa nostra label. What better way than to vote for a party that’s largest in the Kingdom of the Zulus?

The Christian parties need not bother trying to get my vote because, well, I have gay friends and I am pro-choice and they are against both.

So who am I?

I am a black woman who is an artist.

This coming election, I don’t really care much for whatever party is going to do for my gender or race. I think, though we are advancing slowly on both counts, there are many proponents of gender and race in this country. What I want to hear from the different parties is what my fellow artists and me can expect from them. I want to know that when the next writer, singer, actor or visual artist dies, they will not be broke because we are after all, the cultural ambassadors for South Africa and I think it’s time political parties recognized it as such.

I am not going to make suggestions of how best parties can help artists, I would rather they were  all imaginative enough and come up with something as opposed to plagiarizing my ideas and eventually not fulfilling them. And if their ideas are good enough and their t-shirts are cool enough, I am willing to be then non-celebrity celebrity endorser of that party. I promise.

So ANC, DA, AZAPO and IFP, let me know what you’ve got for us. Artists are a powerful block that unfortunately, tends to be ignored by politicians. In 2009, ignore us at your own peril!

So at a godly hour when I put on my phone thius morning, I heard I had a voice message at 4.45am sent in by some well-meaning (I am sure) but clueless on phone etiquette Zimbabwean friend all excited ‘things are gwan my friend. I am so excited about the deal in Zim and I am coming home. I shall be back in Southern Africa soonest.’

OK, am I the last of the SADC pessimists? At this point in time, I have been thinking of migrating to West Africa (well ok may be not Nigeria. There is MEND there, I have never liked the idea of being kidnapped and may be not the Francophone Africa either, my French sucks) and staying in Ghana. I hear I would fit in perfectly because uhhm, well, I look very Gha and would just fit in but more importantly, the Ghanaians I came across while there in July absolutely loved me because I bear an uncanny resemblance to Junior Agogo (there are worse reasons to emigrate than looking like a Black-star football player who just happens to be the nephew of Ghana’s beloved Jerry Rawlings. Imagine what writing advances I might be able to get:-)

OK may be I am not migrating but I see absolutely no reason to be excited about this region at the moment. For example that much-talked of deal. Let’s do a quick analysis of it for a moment, shall we?

Tsvangson, as Zimbabweans call him, won majority of parliamentary seats in the March elections and yet he is willing to settle for less cabinet posts (13 of his to Mugabe’s 15 and Arthur Mutambara’s 3) and willing to  have less Senate seats? Hello? I know he said something about wanting to work for peace with other Zimbabweans in his speech after the signing but that seems like conceding defeat when one has won to me. On the other hand in spite of what Uncle Bob said in his speech, ‘there are things in here that I don’t like. There are things in this that he doesn’t like…’ it seems the old man got away with so much more. Which leads me to conclude that may be in sofar as Tsvangirayi is concerned, any power at all is better than no power. Can such a person be trusted with the welfare of the people who initially voted him in and believed in him or will he just amass what he and his fellow men (there seems minimal female representation) can for the next eighteen months while in power? Am I the only person who studied a bit of Zimbabwean history in high school who sees some coimparisons between this and the time when Smith gacve power to Muzorewa?

I hope, of course, that I am wrong and want to really believe that something good will come out of it but I am a tad cynical. Fortunately for Zimbabwe, there is another South African who is also hopeful that all will be well in Zimbabwe. It is The Negotiator – T-Boss who, as I write is in Sudan trying to broker another deal. is it just me or does it look like Mr. Mbeki does not want to come home, preferring instead to carve a niche for himself as an African statesman because of some loud talk that he must step down before nexct elections from Julius the Zealous (when will someone in the parent body of the ANC shut this idiot up? And by idiot I don’t mean that literally. English is not my first language!). I get the feeling that the country will one day rue the day that we allowed him on the national platform – and that day is not too distant.

Meanwhile, the Merry Monarch in the East (King Mswati III) has declared that there shall be elections soon although Swaziland does not have an opposition party.

Zambia will soon have Rupiah in power to replace the late Levy, so may be that is something to look forward to. And then there is always the inherited presidency of Botswana to brighten up my day when I am down so may be things are not that bad in SADC after all.

But I certainly do not think that they are so good to warrant someone giving me a phone call at 4.45 in the morning. I know America is the sole superpower in the world and as such, American residents are allowed not to consider what time it might be for us poor people in the global and geographical South but, come on.

OK so in South Africa, Women’s Month has come to an end as of 00:00:01 this morning, to the collective sigh of many a man in the country. I was reflecting in the early hours of the morning (hey, it was very windy and I couldn’t sleep. Besides, that’s when I do whatever thinking I am capable of doing). So I was thinking about the whole Women’s Month leading to Heritage Month thingy (for the non-South African readers, September is Heritage Month. As a country we find a reason to name a month for everything and I am sure if menkind campaign hard enough, we women will be willing to work with them and name the shortest month of the year after them – not that they need it.). During Women’s Month, we saw articles in weeklies and dailies celebrating women who have managed to make a mark in male-dominated industries; women who have achieved in their particular fields; there were even speeches here and there calling on the need for men to end chauvinism and patriarchy and here is the rub. Two incidences during Women’s Month made me question the whole accusation of men being ‘sexists/chauvinists/patriarchal etc’. No! Hold on to the Sistahood! Before you bash me and tell me that I am messed up/trying to suck up to menkind etc, I have a question for fellow women based on the two incidences I shall soon mention. As we go into Heritage Month, what heritage are you leaving as a sister, mother, daughter? How are you, as a woman, pushing patriarchy?

Incident Number One involved a host of women in the first week of August marching and singing in support of a certain man who shall remain nameless (hey, I don’t want to be called counter revolutionary – even though I am unsure what revolution we are having) and who has exercised some questionable judgment with regards to women – young and old. These are the same women who, last year during the same man’s rape trial, walked around with placards reading ‘kill the bitch’ and  distinctly saw one saying,. ‘you can rape me any time___________(insert name of said man here)’. Yet again, just like Mail & Guardian editor Ferial did, I questioned whether there was a lack of female leadership to inspire my mothers, sisters and grandmothers to put their time to better use than traveling so many miles to cheer for some man who is dealing with their own legal woes. I mean, some of these women in the league are top dawgs and well-known intellectuals. I got a response form one of my girls when I posed the question of these otherwise independent, intellectual women in Polokwane singing the second national anthem (it’s called Umshini Wam stupid. Where u bin?) to one of my friends, she responded by saying it was all a matter of power. Yeah okay, but why can’t they want to be the powerful ones? Why support a man of questionable moral judgment in order to attain that power? I sort of got the answer for this from the girl who used to watch my son way back. An intelligent woman, with some tertiary, she told me, ‘if the ANC fields a woman candidate I will never vote for them.’ Her boyfriend, an enlightened brother and I were left with our jaws literally on the ground. Women run the majority of households in South Africa, sometimes with zero income and yet we can’t run the country? Come on.

Incident Number Two occurred while I was watching 3Talk. As some in the world may know, there were recent killings of some students by a fellow student who fancied himself a samurai warrior at a school in Krugersdorp (or may be not. Lately the world can’t keep up with these child killers. Must be something in the bottled water!). so Noeleen decides she is going to do a show on teen violence and get a panel of psychologists, educational experts etc and ask them why our schools are becoming more and more violent the world over. One of the panelists, a woman nogal, stated how parents must take responsibility and not just leave the school to discipline the child (nothing wrong with that). And then (and here is where I started having serious issues), she did not understand how the son managed to leave the house with a samurai sword while the mother was present (please note, although the child came from a two parent household, from this panelist’s perspective, it was the mother’s fault). Sure, the parents needed to take responsibility but it was the role of the PARENTS and not just the mother. How the hell; can women make advance on a socio-political level if we keep judging other women in a patriarchal way (it is the role of a mother to be a good parent and such). When I heard this woman and I started rolling my eyes.

I started thinking about how women always coo coo when one of my male cousins takes a little walk with my son ‘you are such a good man. You love children’, even if it’s only for thirty minutes while if, God forbid, I am not attentive for three minutes and my child falls on a toy and hurts himself, I am reminded by a society largely of women what a pathetic mother I am. I started thinking too of other instances. I started thinking of the women who were involved in Mail & Guardian after the Noord miniskirt incident who stated, ‘she deserved it. Why was she wearing something so short?’; then there are the women police officers who dismiss claims of rape because ‘you were drunk. May be you wanted it’. There is also the sister who thinks her married brother is a stud/playa etc when he cheats on his wife and brings girlfriend to her house but would be devastated if her man were to do the same. Then there is the mother who wants to tell here daughter that she is as good as any man and yet the mother allows her son to stay out later than the daughter, gives preference with regards to food and allowance to the boy child etc. Are you really raising a daughter who thinks she is an equal?

Sure there was a lot to celebrate, but there is also a lot to bemoan. As women we should question ourselves. How can a country largely populated by women be one of the most patriarchal one in the world….unless, unless…we women are pushing patriarchy? Can we stop please? Before we expect menkind to love and support us, may be we need to love and support each other.