They should have seen it coming, poor foreign correspondents. The signs were there as early as Tuesday evening at the Independent Electoral Commission nerve centre in Pretoria.
A fellow who was supposed to have been an elections observer was observed sleeping in front of the TV, while BBC News was observing what he was supposed to be observing —South Africa’s third democratic elections. Were our elections a damp squib? Or was the observer bored by the almighty BBC’s observance?
For many foreign hacks, the biggest news story in South Africa in 2004 turned out to be a dud. And many of the international observer missions who in the past have competed with the foreign correspondents for a piece of the South African experience chose to give this poll a miss.
But among the observers who did want to see how we did it were those beacons of democracy Liberia and Zimbabwe. Maybe they learned something.
Because the people of the South had their own entertainment menu lined up — designed for domestic consumption, not export. Proudly South African, after all.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota, North West local government minister Darkey Africa and the naked men of Thokoza were star performers. They injected vivid colour into what foreign journalists, who appeared to be hungry for the blood and gore of “another African election”, were finding a dreadful day. Perhaps their palates aren’t yet subtle enough to appreciate South African cuisine.
As if to prove that the 10 years of democracy have not evaporated the giant labour federation’s fighting spirit Cosatu called for a stay away. Stirring stuff — except that April 14 had been declared a public holiday. But it was good to see that the more things change the more they stay the same.
Then Lekota showed that his former nickname Terror was not an apartheid-imposed slur. He sent an Inkatha Freedom Party/Mangosuthu Buthelezi acolyte packing after the man had suggested that it was rude for Lekota to have arrived in Buthelezi’s neighbourhood without first paying homage to the Umtwana ka Phindangene.
In keeping with his black consciousness early days, Lekota put it in a nutshell for the Buthelezi aide: “I go where I like.”
Then Africa promised that once a helicopter arrived he would personally go to a farm where farmhands were allegedly been kept captive by a farmer who refused them the right to cast their ballots. Africa, who must have read former African National Congress leader and Nobel Laureate Chief Albert Luthuli’s Let My People Go, pledged to pull down the gates of the farm. Police reported that they arrived at a farm and knocked the gates down, and that a couple of farmhands voted. But there was no mention of whether all that could be attributed to Africa’s heroics and helicopter.
A Thokoza man found a stunningly novel way of beating the long queue: he arrived wearing nothing except a piece of cloth covering his vital organs. In their embarrassment, the electoral officials and the police ensured that he cast his vote as quickly as possible and got out of the area.
Sure nobody died, but who says we had a boring election?