Struggling to see between crusts of dried eye goo, I picked my wallet; confirmed my ID and voter's card were intact, as well as the observer's badge that would save me the pain of queuing for hours. After hastily washing and wiping away the goo, I was off.
By 6 am I had this stain on my small finger that would last another couple weeks...or months. But it was alright, I knew my favourite would have a tough time winning, but at least I voted with my conscience, right? That is all that matters, right?
Flash forward two years later. The regret in people's voices when reading the newspaper, or talking politics is obvious...for most at least. It would be easy to give a sarcastic, "see the people you voted in" statement, but the truth of the matter is that choices made by the majority affect all of us, both the conscientious and the gullible.
That is when you realize, democracy isn't as glamorous as they made it sound in school. Makes you think... see, if it was a despot, you couldn't blame yourselves for the bad governance because in that case you didn't have a choice. Because dictators do bad shit whenever they want.
There is this amount of pain you feel when you see the extreme levels in the proliferation of corruption, and callousness in the use of tax money for selfish purposes, by the supposed revolutionary leaders. Then there are the images in the media of people who have lost loved ones as a direct result of corruption; the pain in their eyes when the govt says it'll compensate them, as if that should give them some sort of comfort, especially knowing the circumstance behind the deaths.
The pain is almost unbearable when you remember that we did this to ourselves. We brought this onto ourselves because when viewed through the tribal monochrome, we only had two choices in that election; it was their people, or our people. Since when has that helped anyone outside very specific family circles?
We had the lessons of history on our side... FIFTY FUCKING YEARS!! We knew(and still know) the political affiliations, since it they have been within the same freakin circles since independence! Yet, we still voted along tribal lines! Divided along lines that wouldn't make a difference whichever choice we made as long as we stuck within the two choices passed off as the only way for change.
Since when has voting for a person of your tribe helped you directly or indirectly? You still have the same struggle passed down the generations from your parents and them from theirs and so on. The only constant is the stupidity in voting.
I thank God for devolution, because it shows where poor decision making starts. Our 'tribesmen' are buying speedboats for 'us'; in a region without navigable water-bodies save for dams. Where they oppose setting up of cancer centers because they weren't 'consulted', but put up full page advertisements in newspapers looking for bidders for the construction of their palatial residences, funded by your own money.
And you can bet the lowest bidder isn't necessarily assured the contract because nothing is too good for them, and the advertisement was more of a formality than anything else. Because they want to assure us of "transparency".
Does it strike you as weird that being in public service is one of the fastest ways of growing rich in our country?
And you want to know the saddest thing about all of this? The most absolutely fucked up fact that should essentially give people sleepless nights and nightmares?
The most absolutely fucked up thing is that come 2017, even without rigging, the same faces that have always had their fists up our butt-holes will be elected back to power!
