Born a Xhosa in Beaufort West 60-years ago, Selina Bezuidenhout was one of twelve children. Today she’s a pensioner living on R960 a month. She owns her semi-detached, double storey house on the Cape Flats and is the only black African woman in her street and one of very few Africans in this predominantly coloured area. The mother of three grown up children, Bezuidenhout was a domestic worker in Cape Town for most of her life; she started to clean kitchens when she was 14. Despite the fact that Bezuidenhout “really dislikes” that “Umshini wam” and the “continious toyi-toying of Jacob Zuma” she’s voting for the ANC.
Selina Bezuidenhout, 60, Retired domestic worker, Elsiesriver, Cape Flats, Cape TownVote quote: “I have to vote because I think my vote will make the ANC want to do better.” (Photo: David Harrison)
“It’s my party. I’m voting for Oupa Mandela.”
I was 11 years old and loving arithmetic when I realised that something is wrong in this town of ours.
I saw the white and coloured kids had a high school, the black kids had nothing. We didn’t even have a school building. We had primary school in various church halls all over the place and there was no high school in Beaufort West for the blacks.
My parents told us that there’s no money for going to high school in another town. There were too many of us. I really loved school. When I was young, this thing made me very angry. But my Ouma used to say that’s the way of the world and one must accept that the whites and coloureds can have that which we can’t.
My husband, who was a coloured man, and I came to Elsies River in 1980 and he got the house here. Although I’ve lived here for 30 years, some of my neighbours and the kids in the streets still call me ‘kaffir’. They used to say: ‘But why is the kaffirs getting houses before us?’ Today sometimes the kids will call me kaffir when I walk past. I say nothing. They’re kids. They speak their parent’s words. Since we got the vote in 1994, those words don’t hurt me anymore because I’m a person now with a voice. I’m on that voting list and I’m somebody. That’s why I will vote for the ANC.
When the ANC came to power, my life changed. They gave me dignity; in return I support them.
But I’m not voting for Zuma. I’m voting for Mandela and for the ANC. Previous years I was happy voting. But I’m not happy this time. I see too many things that are wrong.
I watch the news and I see the wrong things are happening inside the ANC. I don’t want to say anything against Zuma except that his relationship with that Shaik man makes me sad. He’s refusing to go to court and we’ll never know if he’s innocent or guilty. Always, I’ll wonder.
And then he spends a lot of time with that boy Julius Malema… When I see Malema on television, I get up and switch the TV off because that boy must go back to school and learn how to talk.
Zuma’s singing that song ‘Umshini Wam’ all the time. What does that mean? Why does he sing that song?
I’m an old woman. I don’t want to see my leaders singing instead of sitting down with the people of the country talking. Jesus, I pray often to bring a change in that man’s mind.
In the time of tata Mandela, people used to do a lot of talking. They talked about everything to everybody — all the whites and blacks together. You know, words people can understand. The time for dancing is over. We have to be serious about the problems — people are hungry, people are scared of all the skollies and crime and people are sad because there’s too much corruption in the ANC.
I’m not voting for Mister Lekota and Cope because I want him to go back to the ANC. He’s a very good man.
I cannot vote for the DA. I don’t know them. But I do know that you can’t vote for the English whites. They change their stories all the time. Today it’s this. Tomorrow it’s that. History has taught us not to trust them. The white Afrikaners are different — you can trust them, but their time is now finished.