I Am No Government: I Am Its Slave

"Democracy is a government of the people, for the people and by the people" is how my Grade 11 history teacher told us back in the day.

He said we, the poor and the have-nots, are our own government. He said we would be able to elect representatives who will speak on our behalf. People who will behave as we would. People who would live as we do. This was a brilliant picture he painted for us yet he neglected to tell us that the picture would not materialize, at least not for me and my poor Black people.

I was fortunate to witness the whole convoy of the Western Cape government recently and I got a picture of what many of those who enter politics for personal gain, long for. Although I will not say which MEC is transported in which car, for fear of being incorrect, the photographs below will show exactly the kind of representation currently displayed.

I am not saying people who work in government should be driven in caskets but if the representatives don't look anything like the people they are representing, how do you propose to solve what government has called crime?

How do we accept that services can not be rendered on time and speedily when the guy who comes to address such issues comes to us driven in one of the above? This is patronizing the poor people and Gwede Mantashe and his ANC is aware of this. This is misrepresentation because people will start assuming that South Africans drive in these.

The fact of the matter is that it is impossible to say one understands the plight of the poor when they have never experienced it. Most of the men, if not all, in the Western Cape government went to high profile schools and colleges, in all likely-hood. They are representing the interests of those who, like them, have been on the soft side of the rag. They stand there, in their black shiny suits, crocodile-skin shoes and their expensive ties, telling the poor that "we are doing the best we can to better everybody's lives. The picture below does not show this. It is only a single example of the many structures of this sort which were there and and continue to be the center of man's life.

One of the former police commissioners once reacted to a question about his mansion and his lavish lifestyle, that he does not want the President of Interpol to come and visit him and find him in a shack. This guy was a politician and a representative of the people. He represented the South African Police Service, an arm of government, and thereby accountable to the people. Yet the people he chases day in and day out are poor Black people.

This is misrepresentation and thus this democracy does not seem to be heading to a direction of equality and fairness, instead, it promotes the gaps between the us, the poor, and the government and its people.

I am ungovernable until such time that a true representation of the people is fair. Until these people stop driving such cars at the expense of mankind.

Swallow that!