And you thought I’d left you. Never. Not with a few days to voting, how could you imagine I’d leave you in the media darkness. And for real guys, who are we voting for?
I’m Tonya Khoury and I’m sick of media polls. It feels like #Oprah rode into town and said: “You get a poll, you get a poll, everybody gets a poll!” Regarding these polls, their sample sizes are never more than 5000 people. And we take them very seriously.
Yesterday I read that 42% of the sample are not registered to vote or are not voting at all. 42%? Are you kidding me? Go home! If I had to tell you 42% of my data is flawed then I wouldn’t be in business.
So, without further ado, here’s the Acumen Media poll based on a social media data set of posts amounting to more than half a million that have been narrowed down to 216 thousand posts that mention “voting for” or ‘voting’ or ‘vote’.
‘Hiding to nothing’
Want to hear some good news? The ANC is on a hiding to nothing. Although they fill up our timelines, we, the audience, absolutely despise them. The message is loud and clear South Africa: “Do not vote for the ANC”. We have spoken, a lot, and that’s basically all we’ve got, that and what on earth is #MK on about?
Let me try to get this right: #Zuma never left the ANC, he was suspended. He stole a logo and stood up as a leader of #MKParty. He was told he can’t be the leader, but he insisted so the #IEC put him on the ballot. Then it went to court, and he was told, again, this time by the highest court in the land, that he cannot contest in these elections.
So, he’s gone back to #Nkandla, yet his face and his #OrlandoStadium rally lead the masses of SA to believe that he is firmly in control of MK. See what he did there? #ChessMaster with a Standard 2 education. He’s so smart. He doesn’t even have a legal link to MK, yet the party and the ballot are carrying his face and the nation is buying it.
The biggest foolery was that Zuma is stupid. He outwitted all of them. Will MK be a thing in August? Nah, I think they’ll have imploded by then. They haven’t paid volunteers; the coffers are dry but hold onto your seats because we all know uBaba is a cry baby and KwaZulu-Natal is likely to make a lot of noise.
Regardless, the stats show that they’re unlikely to make a massive impact in the actual election.
The other message the data conveys is that we are in #CoalitionCountry. If you don’t know your political party’s affiliations, then you had better read the small print again. You are going to be ruled by a coalition, that is a fact.
The other massive elephant in the room is today’s youth because they are either apathetic to the election or they haven’t a clue where to put that cross.
They may, very well, stay in bed. Not that I blame them because this is chaos. It doesn’t make a lot of sense and carries quite heavy admin to register to vote. The real truth is we have so many choices but none that really stick.
Me? I’m voting for #RiseMzansi for national just because I know the folk that work for this new party, and they really are a good bunch of people. A great deal of them are from foundations like #AhmedKathrada who I’ve had the honour to work with for many years.
Ten years ago, the #Kathrada foundation took my breath away. I walked into a very humble office and there were people scurrying everywhere making sure good stuff got done. Uncle Kathy spoke from the grave about corruption and malfeasance in the ANC. If the Kathrada crew are there, so am I. Locally and provincially, I’m still not sure.
The #IFP runs my region and I know the ward councilor personally and he’s always feeding people, so I’m good with that. I don’t even really know who leads the IFP nationally, isn’t that crazy? Their posters carry #PrinceButhelezi’s face but he’s, um, dead. Who I vote for provincially is an absolute mystery but vote I shall, because the one thing I’m absolutely certain of, and you should be too, is the ANC have to go.
I’ve voted for Cyril the squirrel before and I kicked my own behind. Cyril looks tired, he looks bored, he looks like he’d rather be abroad. Whatever you do good people of SA, unseat this rotten king. #VoetsekANC.
You want me to mention the DA, don’t you? I can tell, you actually are reading just for that. Let’s go there. They burnt our flag! How can you burn my flag? That’s my flag, that’s 2010’s flag, that’s the Rugby World Cup flag, that’s Madiba’s flag and … that’s my flag. Don’t you touch it.
It’s almost as if the DA are running for own goal deliberately. Isn’t burning our flag treasonous? Isn’t it the ultimate disrespect to our country? They are staggering this lot. They don’t burn the ANC’s paraphernalia; they burn OUR flag. They are also anti-Palestinian which does not go down well with most humans.
Here’s the trouble with the DA, apart from the obvious, they are linked to FF+, BOSA, PA, ACDP and Action SA in what they term a #MoonshotPact. This means that those party’s votes will inevitably end up with the DA and that makes me mad as hell. Action SA may stand a chance but the looming DA will gobble them up. I’m not a Herman fan, I think he’s xenophobic, but he has a strong following only to turn blue at the end of the race. #JogOn.
And then you have the red berets, the #EFF, now a firmly established party. #Ndlozi has been running as if he’s entering the #ComradesMarathon. He has been on every media channel all week and he communicates so well, doesn’t he? The whole of the EFF do really well in the oration category but not so great in the action and honesty category.
I think we’ve all worked out where the EFF sits and that’s around the 10% mark. It’s okay, we enjoy painting parliament red sometimes.
And that’s it, even though you have a bunch of independent candidates and hundreds of parties you’ve never heard of, these are the ones that are going to be in our coalitions. Doesn’t look pretty, does it? But it’s a darn sight more attractive than the ANC. Right? It’s a mess, we might as well chuck our vote in to mix it up. #Elections 2024 #GoVote or #GoBroke.
As for the rest of the news there was so much to mention: #GeorgeBuilding left the nation mourning. #PhalaPhalaRefund had Cupcake hopping. #Grootman’s disgusting revenge porn acting dominated many headlines. It gets worse: A five-year-old was shot in Shoshanguve. Two of our bread truck drivers were killed in the #SaskoMurders.
And it gets comical: The judge in the #SenzoMeyiwa trial completely lost his rag in court. He was embroiled in a shouting match with Advocate Baloyi and Advocate Mshololo. The judge told #Mshololo that one would only behave that way in a tavern in Soweto (which he has frequented) and she retorted that she doesn’t frequent taverns. How did we get here? #Justic4Senzo? We will never have justice for #Senzo, not in my lifetime.
Across the seas, the Iranian President was killed in a helicopter crash. We all kept very quiet when this news was announced and we took a sharp breath in and held it for a little longer than is comfortable, but no one said a word. It’s almost as if he who speaks pushes the nuclear button.
Scary across those waters. They’re calling Raisi the “butcher of Iran” and then millions, literally millions of people attended his funeral procession. The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Bibi and others, but Netanyahu called it a disgrace and promptly ignored it. A bit like Putin ignored his and almost came to South Africa, remember that?
Well, there’s rumours that #Netanyahu will be traveling to the USA. Ah, the USA, where kids camp out all night, which is cute because they think they make a difference. We’ve all seen what happens to nasty politicians, they hang around for eternity. Nothing. Nothing happens to nasty politicians. Who said Trump?
Enough of troubled waters. I beg your indulgence on an unbelievable story before you go. It’s straight out of Netflix. Local Sodwana fisherman and salt of the earth guy #JohnMatambu was hijacked, kidnapped and was never seen again.
The perpetrator is Ferdi Visser. Visser kidnapped John, made him sail to the northern most part of SA waters and that’s the last we heard of John. A burnt boat and Visser turned up in Mozambique; the rods from the vessel had been sold to locals for Visser’s transport and food. And he was alone.
South Africa and Mozambique put out a manhunt when John was kidnapped and within days civil society had caught Visser. He was arrested in Maputo and then extradited to South Africa. In the extradition process the cops bungled it and Visser could have just gone home. They have no proof, you see? We watched it happen, we caught him, and our judiciary was going to release him, except, Visser is on parole.
He had literally left prison just before he came to Sodwana to slip back into more skullduggery. His previous charges? Everyone is so tightlipped, but we do know that he got a presidential pardon for those charges (hence he was on parole). I’ll just leave that there for you to draw your own assumptions. So here in Sodwana we are back to square one.
The family are laying a charge of murder to see if that sticks. When Visser was being driven to court this week, he banged his head so hard on the police van that he had to be taken to hospital. This guy is a nasty piece of work, and the family is desperate to know what happened to their beloved #JohnMatambu.
I’ve long used up my words and we didn’t even talk about #Uyinene’s killer who is back in court for rape. Nor did I refer to Diddy’s disgusting abusive behaviour and how he beat the system but not social media justice. I didn’t even mention that #Boeing had yet another oopsie that cost a man his life.
There are so many more stories but for now, vote my country, vote for anyone you choose, but vote! Rise my South Africa, we only get to use our power every few years, make it count. Side note, talking about power, have you stored all your electricity for 30 May 30? We’ll be like Simon and Garfunkel. Hello darkness my old friend, will be here to talk to you again.
I’m Tonya Khoury and thank you for scratching the surface with me and Acumen Media.
