Vote Responsibly!
My neighbour, a hardworking single parent, often tells me how much she despises politicians. "They are like salesmen who sell you products you do not want. They get in the way." It is hard to disagree with her except that I believe that society can only function properly in a constitutional multi-party democracy that requires elected officials in a sovereign parliament to represent us. Elections allow the voters to demonstrate their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the government of the day.
Last year the DA provincial government was the only one that received an unqualified audit and ironically the very people who vote for the ANC migrate from those mal-functioning provinces to the Western Cape in the hope of receiving better services.
In 2010 an estimated 800 000 potential job opportunities did not materialise due to the failure of local and provincial government to spend their allocated budgets. The department of public works revealed that 226 231 job opportunities were lost because of the failure of district and local municipalities to spend their Expanded Public Works budgets.
The Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs noted in its 2010 annual report that about R2.2billion municipal infrastructure grants went unspent. Of the 283 municipalities, 51 of them spent less than 50% of their allocation or nothing at all.
Corruption and municipal mismanagement is rife and taxpayers' money is stolen with gay abandon to enrich those in power. Starting with the President Zuma and his family - in 19 March 2010, the Mail & Guardian published a long list of the Zuma family's business interests entitled "Zuma Incorporated."