My Second Vote

Today was South Africa's 4th democratic election, and my second (the last time I voted was in 1994, and since then I have not been in the country). I got up really early and rode to the school around the corner which was my polling station. I got there 10 minutes after the polls opened, but still had to wait for almost 45 minutes in the queue (and I had it lucky ... there were news reports of people having to queue for 7 hours).


I had only made up my mind who I was going to vote for the night before. I wish I had given it some more time and read up more on policies rather than personalities. I used an online system hosted by the Mail and Guardian which matches your opinions against political parties and got told to vote for the Independent Democrats or the Inkatha Freedom Party. I ignored the recommendation.

Here's a sweet cartoon by Jeremy Neil about the extremely profession way in which the elections were conducted by the Independent Electoral Committee.