Do you know it's local government elections?

 Who are the people we're voting for?

You wouldn't say we're having local government elections.  Sure, there's election posters and adverts - these have party leaders' pictures on them.  But we're not voting for Jacob Zuma or Mmusi Maimane - we're voting for local, individual candidates, and not a party as for national elections.

But I don't know who the candidates are, their experience, qualifications and agendas to place my trust in them for another five years.

I see no posters or pamphlets or adverts in community papers introducing them to the community, listing their qualities and asking us to place our faith in them to represent us in council.

No, as in previous elections, we don't know who they are until we see their names on the ballot paper.

In South Africa local government elections are campaigned for as if they were national elections.  Local issues and concerns - service delivery, planning, development, etc - are subsumed into often irrelevant national agendas, and citizens vote on party-political agendas and affiliations rather than suburb-level concerns. 

We are piously told local government is the closest level of government to the people.  If so, why are national party faces urging us to vote for "them".  Where are the city's local political leadership in all this? Certainly not within 5km of where I live.

Citizens are being scammed into believing that voting for one candidate - the names on the ballot papers - makes a difference.  Under our deeply flawed electoral system, party interests outweigh that - candidates owe their allegiance to the party, not voter.

That until-voting-day-unknown-candidate wants your support, not to improve your community and ward, but to further personal and political agendas.  He/she is a party cipher, a hack, often with little to no community exposure that the party parachutes onto the ballot paper to bolster its agenda in council.  For the DA it's their red-carpet, business-first development agenda; for the ANC it's state capture, corruption and incompetence.

I reserve my right not to vote for a party next month, but a credible, honourable person who places his/her community first.  Alas, no evidence has been presented that such a candidate is standing in our ward in general or specifically - no poster, pamphlets, etc.  So election day will be a farce - citizens being asked to vote for unknown candidates - that the IEC will oversee and announce the result credible.

In good conscience, I cannot be part of it.  The electoral system urgently needs an overall.

However, I am receptive to an independent who meets the criteria and introduced him/herself before then.

Published in the Cape Argus.