Mail & Guardian staffers headed to the polls on Wednesday morning. Here are their stories.
Not the venue for the undecided
For the undecided voter Franklin D Roosevelt Primary in Roosevelt Park, Johannesburg, was not the place to be today, writes Mandy Rossouw. The Democratic Alliance (DA) branch chairperson of the area was walking up and down the queue showing off his big DA badge and two DA posters awaited voters as they entered the door to the school. On the other side was the African National Congress (ANC) chairperson, inviting us to the victory party at Luthuli House at midnight.
They were mostly met with stony silence from those in the queue because, judging from the Mercedes’, Volvos and 4x4s parked outside to the snazzy dressers inside, there was no doubt this is middle-class South Africa — a tough crowd.
The 300 people in the queue were quietly freezing in the Jo’burg morning cold while their kids, dressed in their winter woollies and running up and down the lawn, were obviously thrilled to be out this early in the morning.
I joined the queue with some friends while we all bemoaned the lack of coffee or vetkoek at the voting station. For a moment we considered a last-minute Adopt-a-Granny strategy — where you pose as a minder for an elderly person and so jump the queue. The disapproving looks we received while discussing this plan made us decide against it. No use in making enemies on polling day.
After checking the queue for celebrities (there were none) we started singing struggle songs to stave off the boredom. Our fellow voters were less than amused and after five minutes we made peace with the fact that no one would join in.
Inside the school the process went like clockwork, with IEC officials who were obviously old hands. Getting a ballot paper, making my cross and slipping it in the ballot box took all of two minutes of my morning. Will the leaders I chose make good on their promises for the next five years?
When I left the hall I wanted to check what the dress code was for the Luthuli House party. At last I saw the ANC guy across the lawn. But he was already wooing someone else.
Recapturing the essence of our Rainbow Nation
There’s more at stake this time around, that’s obvious, writes Ricky Hunt. Five years ago it took me 10 minutes to vote, this year it took me almost two hours. I voted in Melville, the cosmopolitan little hub in Jo’burg’s north-west suburbs, and the polling station had a queue stretching around the block and then some.
It was cold, but people dressed warmly, some brought coffee, and they all stood there, ID books in hand, for as long as it was going to take.
Did the droves shake off their apathy because our democracy is buckling under the (heavy)weight of populist cult?
Do South Africans think their crosses will bring about a new culture of accountability in which the future president welcomes public debate and handles it competently and politicians invite engagement and criticism?
Do they hope their X’s will help bring in a government that respects our hard-won Constitution and engages in considered and effective public-service programmes?
I don’t think any of us are that naïve, but perhaps this morning was a step towards reclaiming that noble, if somewhat hopeful and idealistic idea of the Rainbow Nation we all hoped to be a part of in 1994 — if only for a morning.
Queue-jumpers and the paranoid
Having relocated to Johannesburg since the last national election, I had a new polling station, Louw Geldenhuys Laarskool in Linden, writes Lloyd Gedye.
I arrived at 8:30 in the morning, wanting to vote quickly before I headed off to work. But there was no chance of that.
I didn’t realise that the elderly were ushered to the front of the queue, and with Linden’s population full of elderly folk, our queue was slow-moving.
I must say though, that a lot of these queue-jumpers hardly looked in their fifties.
As a business journalist I interview CEOs on a regular basis that are older than most of the queue-jumpers.
I figure if you’re able to queue at the bank, you are able to queue at the polling station.
I did notice, however, that all the elderly people who jumped the queue were white, not a single elderly black person tried to get up front, they just joined the queue like everybody else to wait their turn.
My favourite was the man who arrived with his elderly mother and when she was rushed to the front and he was told to join the back of the queue, he walked off to sit in the car and wait for his mother.
People died for the right to vote in this country, but an hour-long queue is too much for him to put up with.
Then there was the white guy two ahead of me who turned on the young black man in front of me and reprimanded him for standing too close to him.
The young black man was in shock and I don’t think the white guy’s story — about someone having recently stolen his phone from his pocket while he was standing in a queue — helped, even with his belated protests that the phone-stealer had been white.
I was embarrassed to be a white male standing in the immediate vicinity of this idiot.
Even on polling day South Africans cannot let go of their prejudices and crime paranoia.
Soon enough I was in the school hall and casting my vote for the national and provincial election.
Proud to be a part of this 15-year-old democracy we call home.
A birthday vote
There is no start to a birthday, quite like the one that finds you standing in a cold, blustery voting queue, writes Lynley Donnelly.
This I did, at Emmarentia Primary School in a queue that was, while not atrocious, long enough to be exposed to the chilly Jozi air. Before long my toes started to lose feeling.
My partner who voted with me had, as men are wont to do, forgotten to even wish me the requisite love, light and happiness. It was not until a friendly IEC official scanning our ID books said how sorry he was that I had started my birthday in the cold, that my partner realised he had forgotten.
Needless to say profuse apologies ensued, along with all kinds of promises to make up for the faux pas. An hour-and-a-half later, I made my mark and went in search of a warm cup of coffee, courtesy -Â naturally — of my other half.
Proudly South African moment
Today was a good day to be old, knocked up or with a kid on your arm — you could jump the voting queues, cast your ballot in about 15 minutes and drive back to your warm bed, writes a disgruntled Qudsiya Karrim.
I’m 22, with no baby bump or kid to drag along in the cold to this momentous event, so I was in for a long, long wait.
The voting queue on Hume Street in Dunkeld West was already snaking down the kids’ park when I got there at 8.30am. People queued in coats and scarves, armed with coffee and novels as they waited their turn. We moved about five steps every 10 minutes.
A few grumbled quietly to each other and into their cellphones: ”Dammit. I should’ve come at 7am.”
”Do you think if I hunch down low enough, I could pass for a 60 year old and jump the queue?”
”Let’s go to Wimpy when we’re done. We deserve that free coffee.”
And me: ”The government seriously needs to consider online voting for the next election!”
I cast my first ballot ever at 11.32am. Three hours and a purple thumb later, I feel very proudly South African. For today, anyway.
Long queues, but happy voters
This morning I arrived at my local voting station at 7.15 and saw a queue that went on forever, writes Jane Franz. I have never had to stand in a line even remotely that long. I returned home, had a cup of coffee, swapped my tracksuit and tackies for work clothes and then returned to my voting station. The line was no shorter, so I joined it and resigned myself to the fact that I would have a long wait.
The atmosphere was incredibly peaceful, with children running around on the playing field and people chatting to those around them. People kept leaving to use the bathroom or to get coffee from a nearby restaurant, returning a lot happier and ready to continue their wait.
It took almost two hours for me to reach the halfway mark. At that point John Mendelssohn strolled along the queue telling us that the voting station at Leeukop Prison was very short. Someone ahead of me asked if it really was worthwhile making the move. The reply was: ”I am a politician. Would I lie to you?”
I weighed up the odds and decided I really didn’t want to risk the move.
However, five minutes later another man made the same announcement. I asked him if he was absolutely certain and he replied that if he was me he would definitely move. He said there was a staff shortage, which allowed for only 500 people an hour to vote. That did it for me.
I hopped in my car and drove to Leeukop, where it took only 10 minutes to cast my vote. I called all my friends in Lonehill and told them what I had experienced and what the better option was.
The encouraging thing was that everyone seemed quite happy to stand and wait. I did not see a single long face or hear any complaints.
Polling station a ‘state secret’
As our house overlooks a polling station, we were in the privileged position to stake out the queues from our son’s bedroom, writes Yolandi Groenewald. Not that there was much of a queue, as our polling station is a bit of a state secret. So off we went at about 8am and simply walked into the station in the far northern reaches of Kempton Park.
Everyone should have been happy, but as usual, you found the grumblers. If you are not registered at a particular polling station you have to fill in a form. It takes two minutes and is totally pain free. Yet the gentleman behind us threw a fit when IEC officials pointed him towards a pen.
”I don’t want a paper trail for the fucking ANC to follow,” he complained. I prayed that my son, who was staring at the strange men, did not understand the words of discontent. After grumbling some more about the ”fucking IEC”, the ANC and corruption, he reluctantly filled in the form, held out his hand to be marked, and made his cross.
Then he grumbled some more when he had to decide which box to deposit his form in — provincial or national. He was out of the polling station in less than 10 minutes, yet he grumbled all the way to his 4×4 about how useless South Africa had become.
Undecided voter votes
The panic set in as I lay in bed on Wednesday morning, listening to the helicopters overhead, writes Ilham Rawoot. I switched on the radio and listened to those self righteous, confident DJ’s boasting about how excited they were to vote for their beloved parties. Don’t get me wrong, I was very excited, I just had no clue who to vote for an hour before I was set off for Parkhurst Primary School.
The queue at the polling station was a lot longer than I imagined it would be at 8.30am, and I suddenly felt ashamed that I was still undecided.
I thought perhaps eavesdropping on my fellow voters, the parents with prams, the couples, the domestic workers, maybe even the dogs, would inspire a passion for a particular party. But the only conversations around me involved phrases like ”I can’t wait to have children”, ”What happened with that guy last night?” and ”Apparently you can get free coffee if you show your thumb”.
As I moved forward, my mind started going in circles. If I vote for this one, I’ll be a sell-out; if I vote for that one, I’ll be condoning undemocratic governance; if I choose that one, I’m not voting strategically enough. And so it went on, until I reached the ballot box.
All that was left was to have a whispered conversation with the smiling faces on the ballot. They didn’t speak back and I was left having to vote for the only party that didn’t eat my conscience alive. And so I left, an upstanding citizen, with a messy thumb, a free coffee in the near future, and as much uncertainty as ever.
For the first time, I was not voting ANC
My trip to the polls was different to previous experiences, writes Faranaaz Parker. For one thing, there was a queue.
That was unexpected. I’ve never had to wait more than five minutes to vote. But then, there are millions more voters this time around.
The older people standing around me didn’t buy my theory about the number of undecided voters in the election this year. They seemed to have made up their minds. This didn’t gel with my position or my friends.
I shuffled along in the cold for just over an hour, sipping coffee and trying to overcome my feelings of guilt.
For the first time, I was not voting ANC. In my mind, I now had to choose the best of a bad lot. As soon as I entered the school hall, things moved very quickly. Scan, tick, mark, here are your ballots.
Standing in the little cardboard booth, staring at the faces on the ballot sheet, I finally had to make a choice. Would the devil you know really do?
Where the mullet still rules
Voting in Government Village has always been intriguing for me, writes Nicky Rehbock. Every five years I vote at a school for handicapped children in a hamlet of low-cost housing ensconced in a predominantly white, middle-class suburb in Benoni.
It’s a bubble of history, first built to house World War II soldiers in the early 1940s.
When the Nats came to power they bussed in poor whites who had nowhere else to live. For years the jumble of ramshackled and quaint cottages was a National Party stronghold. Since 1994, as the village was expanded and houses upgraded, fresh families moved in, making it quite the social phenomenon.
Once ardent enemies — hardened conservatives and black beneficiaries of the new government’s housing drive — now coexist in an odd sort of world of wild veld, unkempt Maltese poodles, backyard tyre dealers and Ford Cortinas. The mullet is still a fashion statement in Government Village.
So in a way this place is a melting pot and a microcosm of the rough beauty that is South Africa’s democracy and diversity — a very apt place to make my mark for change.
Tinkering with Tupperware
I usually have issues with queuing but standing in line to change the world was one of the most humbling experiences in my life so far, writes Thembelihle Tshabalala.
Voters came out en masse on a freezing Wednesday morning of April 22 to cast their votes and among them was me, a first-time voter.
Keen to jump the queue were a bevy of women who strapped over-sized toddlers to their backs.
This took its toll as I had to wait more than an hour to get to the front of the queue — only to find that I was not on the list.
‘Your name is probably on the list in Kholwane,†said an IEC agent, unable to explain to me why my name was on the list at another voting station.
There was more activity than mere voting at Letare High School in Jabulani where I finally cast my ballot. A female entrepreneur even decided to set up a shop selling Tupperware.
In the heat of the moment
When I registered to vote at Louw Geldenhuys Primary School in Linden many months ago I was most excited that I would be able to walk literally from the front door of my flat over the road to the primary school, writes Lisa Skinner.
The reality, as a working photojournalist on election day, was very different. At 7am I found myself with freezing fingers and numb cheeks at the City Hall voting station in Johannesburg’s CBD.
With a queue of a few hundred growing by the minute I didn’t have the time (or inclination in that cold) to stand and wait but more than that I couldn’t bring myself to weasel my journalistic self to the front of the queue of these dedicated democracy-lovers.
So off I went to the Joubert Park station, situated on Claim Street. The queue snaked around tall, old trees, children’s jungle gyms and tables with stainless steel chess boards embedded in them. The atmosphere was, despite the freezing weather, upbeat and jovial with a few people chuckling at this ‘mlungu†climbing on tables to get a better shot of the growing crowd.
But it was in Ga-Rankuwa, near Pretoria, where I finally found my voting home.
We arrived at the Itireleng Workshop for the Blind. A sunny hall with a retro chequer-board floor greeted us as did the cries of ‘Hello baby†and ‘Welcome here sweetie†by the matronly presiding officer.
After helping a blind voter with her vote she turned her attention to me. Being a journalist and taking photographs made me a mini celebrity. I was helped from check point to thumb swab with smiles and giggles. The only disappointment? As an undecided voter I had planned to split my regional and national vote between two parties. In the excitement of the moment I mixed them up!
I made my mark with my conscience
I had intended to be at the voting station at 7am as the polls opened, but by the time I joined the queue outside the Orange Grove Primary School it was 7.40am, writes Edwina van der Burg. An elderly couple fell in behind me and immediately started the debate of ‘should we stay, or should we go?â€
I wondered the same thing. ‘Ask that lady coming out how long she’d waited,†the wife instructed her husband. About 30 minutes, was the response. So, like me, they stayed.
In the end the wait was 45 minutes all in, but it felt much shorter. As IEC officials patrolled the snaking line for pregnant women, people with babies and those born before 1948 to jump the queue and go vote, those of us left behind started to quip about maybe going home to borrow a neighbour’s baby or a granny.
I briefly wondered if I could convince my seven-year-old to sit in a pram—
Once inside the station, the process was swift — scan ID, proceed to table one to check the voters’ roll, proceed to table two for the indelible ink-marking, proceed to table three for ID stamp and ballots.
Not until I entered the polling box did I finally decide who I was voting for. In the end I made my mark with my conscience and now I have the ink-stained fingernail to prove it.
Making a killing
A prematurely wintery day didn’t seem to deter voters in my district of Greymont, writes Cheryl Taylor.
At about 7.20am the queue leading to the local NG Kerk, our voting station, almost wound around the block.
The mostly white, Afrikaans-speaking voters were in a calm and jovial mood as they waited their turn.
Enterprising locals had set up a tea and coffee station outside the venue and were making a killing at R5 a cup. IEC officials constantly scanned the queue for the elderly, who were ushered into the venue first.
There was a strong police presence outside the venue but I suspect the most they had to deal with were parking violations. It took about an hour to get inside the venue, and the actual voting took less than five minutes.
Quiet and good-natured
Voting at Jan van Riebeek high school in the central Cape Town suburb of Gardens went slowly all through the day, voters taking close to two hours to clear the queue, writes Nic Dawes.
There was some grumbling about what some in the queue said was a shortage of Zip-Zips (new, portable, hand-held scanning units), which added to the delay in this largely DA-supporting ward. But the atmosphere was quiet and good-natured.
At Observatory junior school, where deputy foreign affairs minister Sue van der Merwe voted at around 5pm, there was no queue at all, and the entire process took less than five minutes.