Pay peanuts and hire monkeys

Tumie Modise | Monday July 28, 2014 12:23

It doesn’t end there. Blaring cars and speakers are also the order of the day, as is ‘house to house’ campaigning. It’s truly a mad rush. By now, everyone must know all the candidates in their area.

Just the other day, I had time to reflect on this year’s election men and women of the moment, the candidates. Their faces are everywhere, some very photogenic, some not. Since the month of June, political parties have been very busy with what they call ‘launches’. Some of the launches are huge successes, the others are just flops. Interesting times ahead. This year’s candidates have nothing in common save for the fact that they are all just vying for political office. Never mind party affiliation, nowadays politicians, just like Christians, are not bothered with this whole affiliation thing. While most were nominated to represent their respective parties, others have opted for the lonely path of being independent candidates. Those ones answer to no one, they are their own masters and if things go well for them in October, they will either continue being their own masters or they will sell themselves to the highest bidder. This year’s mekoko mean business, we even have a lone but very determined tshuku among them. The beauty of our democracy.

What concerns me with this year’s candidates is not whether or not they are affiliated, I am more interested in whether they are what the doctor ordered for the next five years. Being a political activist myself, I will be the first to own up that sometimes political affiliation is blinding and often deprives a nation of capable leaders. It’s this thought that crossed my mind as I was going through the profiles of this year’s election candidates. At the rate we are going, one day we shall wake up to the shocking realisation that we sent an alien, or worse, a goat to parliament. I will not even comment on the famed Francistown ghost voters.  In the last three elections where I had the opportunity to vote, I was only sure of the parliamentary candidate. I am not alone, most voters do that. With this year’s candidates though, even to the first time voter, clearly there was no set criteria when final selection was done. The year’s pool is reflective of our society; we have mechanics, the unemployed, former teachers, medical doctors, former top civil servants, former men of the uniform, nurses, the highly educated, the unemployed and even tertiary students. Armed with Bibles and collars, men of the cloth haven’t been left behind either. We have about 10 of those. You can never change your past, which is why it is out in the public domain that some of these candidates have pending court cases, some are alleged wife batterers, known fraudsters, hopeless drunks and that some were ‘dishonourably discharged’ from their former places of employment. The list is endless, it is a mix masala..

Sometime last year, the issue of minimum qualification for political office aspirants once again surfaced. Only a few years back, this matter was debated with the result that the minimum requirement be the JC certificate. A review is long overdue.  As a country, our literacy levels have gone a bit higher since 1966. That we need sharp witted leaders is not very farfetched. By all accounts, this current crop of leaders was the worst bunch. Even the President was not exactly spoilt for choice when it came to selecting his cabinet.

If we continue voting for such people, then we should stop feigning surprise when they go to parley and continue playing truant, waste time debating non-issues and even play with imaginary toys, dictionaries and even iPhones in parliament. If we are not careful, one of these days we are going to wake up and discover huge jumping castles outside parliament. I cannot put that past them. It is not an exaggeration, for the most part of the last quarter of parliament we were without a leader of opposition, yet there were 14 opposition MP’s in there. I will not even mention the shutdown of the parliamentary 411..

But the worst is still to come. By the time their five year term elapses, some of the ‘honourables’ would have become unrecognisable, some would have become rising stars while some would have failed in their mandate, the shameless ones would have flipped-flopped between parties without even a care in the world. But still, in 2019 they would still want to try their luck once more.