Why AEC communities won't vote: 2009 political party checklist on the issues

southern africa | miscellaneous | non-anarchist press Thursday April 23, 2009 15:41 by Anti-Eviction Campaign - AEC aec at antieviction dot org dot za

Release of official AEC election document, 22 April, 2009

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.

AEC's political party checklist on the issues.pdf

* 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?

For comment please call Ashraf at 076 186 1408