Today, I voted for the first time ever- there were no nerves at all until my dad called me and put on his ‘do-this-or-else’ voice, “Anele, make the right choice!”. That’s when he advised me to vote for a certain party in order to get what I want for my country. As the queue shrunk a bit, I thought to myself; what kind of a difference would I be making by voting.
I don’t think many young people know that; although we are tiny little particles- we still make up a dense vote towards our country- so that we can contribute to the maintenance of democracy and human rights. Young people, as educated as we are, do not consider the change which could occur by our vote. There was a guy in front of me who hadn’t registered or had his ID- he said he was not aware that we had to go through ‘all of that’ to vote. My argument is that this kind of lethargic behaviour is exactly what will bring our country to ruins.
When we vote, it’s as though sigcina icala ( doing it for the sake of freeing our conscience) and we don’t understand that disadvantaged people fight for so much more- water, lights, health care. We can still get our birthday BMW’s- because our middle class parents can work for that but somewhere out there- there is a person drinking dirty water.
As young, educated and politically aware people, we should get in line and make the right decisions- not because we feel like it but simply because it’s the right thing to do so that the next young person can get electricity to read a book.
