Inkatha Freedom Party leader Velenkosini Hlabisa waves to supporters outside the Imbaliyamazulu Primary School voting station during a voter registration campaign. Photo: Rajesh Jantilal/AFP
Wednesday.
I’m standing on the side of what’s left of the R103 linking Umkomaas to the N2 and Durban, just south of the bridge over the Umkhomazi River.
Part of the road was washed away during the April 2022 floods.
It still hasn’t been repaired by the eThekwini Municipality, despite a contractor having been brought on site and paid nearly a year ago.
The railway line running parallel to the road and to the ocean also hasn’t been repaired.
It was stripped for scrap metal during the Covid-19 lockdown.
There are still trains, but they are sitting on concrete pilings – now overgrown with weeds – and they don’t look like they’re going anywhere anytime soon.
The overhead pedestrian bridge has collapsed.
So have the station buildings, which lost their doors, windows frames when the railway lines themselves were looted.
Despite the devastation, it’s a beautiful spot, renowned for diving on the Aliwal Shoal and for fishing.
Unfortunately I haven’t come here for a throw, although I’m starting to wish I’d brought a rod with me.
On the grass bank between the railway line and the road, Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen and Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) president Velenkosini Hlabisa are going fishing themselves.
They haven’t brought rods either, but they’re still at it, although they are in search of votes and not putting a line in the water in the hope of catching a Shad.
The two leaders and their colleagues from ActionSA and other parties have set up shop on the bank and are addressing the TV cameras assembled on the roadside while hoping nobody gets run over.
The charter parties have identified the collapse of water reticulation and other infrastructure as a major chink the ANC’s armour ahead of voting day and are kicking off their campaign to exploit it among voters.
They’re outlining how their parties and their allies in the Multi Party Charter for South Africa will fix Umkomaas if they win the 29 May national and provincial elections.
There is plenty of material for them to work with and they’ve chosen Umkomaas – which falls under eThekwini Metro ward 99 – for obvious reasons.
They’ve also chosen Umkomaas because it’s the first ward that the DA/IFP alliance took off the ANC since they started working together after the 2021 local government elections.
DA voters in the ward, which the ANC held for nearly 30 years, voted for the IFP candidate, Jane Naidoo, in the by-election last year, a reciprocal arrangement which has since seen the DA benefit elsewhere in the province at the cost of the governing party.
The agreement that delivered the IFP ward 99 was the forerunner of the current pre-election coalition, so there is a certain symbolism that comes with kicking off this part of the 2024 campaign there.
The security contingents are having nightmares every time a tractor hauling a diving boat passes on the single lane of road that is left, but the event passes with nobody being run over or falling down the side of the cliff into the ocean below.
It’s a strange choice of places on my part to come up for air after two and a bit weeks of reading, re-reading and re-re-reading nine political party manifestos in order to populate the Mail & Guardian’s online elections quiz with some content.
Strange, but somehow appropriate.
It’s been 16 days spent waist deep in an avalanche of political party promises in an attempt to work out who stands where on what issues – and to turn this into something fun for the punters on the website.
From the African Transformation Movement’s four paged shorty to the Freedom Front Plus’s through to the Economic Freedom Fighters 260-page behemoth, I’ve trawled – at times crawled – through them all for content.
The DA’s rescue plans, the Freedom Front Plus’s blueprints to rebuild and restore and rebuild South Africa, the EFF’s road to victory, I’ve read them all – repeatedly – over the past fortnight.
In the process, I’ve been promised everything from nuclear power to mass deportation of migrants to the death penalty in return for my vote.
None of these offerings really appeal to me all that much, so thus far the exercise hasn’t swung me in favour of any of the parties whose manifestos I’ve read.
Granted, the Umkhonto weSizwe party is still set to launch its manifesto – we’re told it will do so in the coming week – but somehow I don’t see former president Jacob Zuma landing me as a voter when it does with a promise to send pregnant teenagers to Robben Island.
Perhaps I’ll pass by the polling station on voting day.
Go fishing instead.