Think before you ink

This Wednesday marks the annual commemoration of South Africa’s first democratic elections. Who can forget exactly where they were and where they voted on that special day in 1994. Many had waited a long time – a lifetime – to cast their vote, to make their mark on that special piece of paper. Images of the long queues that snaked across the fields at the rural voting stations to the snapshots of white and black people standing in line waiting to vote in the cities and towns are forever etched in my mind.
Fast forward 22 years and the romance of South Africa’s peaceful transition is long gone. Many of the terms used then like “reconciliation, rainbow nation, nation-building, forgiveness and peace” have been replaced by words like “racist slurs, monkeys, racism” and “service delivery protests” to cast the net a bit wider.
If anything South Africans have learnt that there is so much more to freedom than politics, rhetoric, slogans and empty promises. As we move to August 3 let us all take the time to think deeply, without emotion but rather with intellect, with head instead of heart, before making that cross on their ballot paper.
HEIDI GIBSON
Ballito