South Africa needs to make politics boring again

I’m back in South Africa in time to vote, except I can’t: I’m currently registered to the non-ward of Dublin, Ireland.

Yet, who would I vote for anyway? If I read the roadside posters, I’d end up down a pothole, physically and metaphorically. Are they going to fix the potholes? The electricity? The yawning hunger of an angry nation?

I say this as someone who grew up in Benoni in a house with 60 cans of baked beans, 20 jars of coffee and a toilet paper mountain. It was great until it wasn’t, when my friends mocked me about the baked bean ramparts in our hallway.

The thing is, my dad was an inveterate grocery shopper who read supermarket supplements like the holy grail, circling the real deals, then came home victorious with 40 tubes of toothpaste and 24 packs of Vitamin C.

It drove my mom slightly potty, because where would all this stuff go? At his funeral, she was only half-joking when she said she still had 16 bottles of HP Sauce in the store cupboard should anyone want one.

The value of planning for the future

My dad’s argument was undeniably true: he was saving money by spending R100 on 50 boxes of teabags (in 1985) which would normally have cost him R200.

He wasn’t wrong, but they don’t feel like savings if you don’t ever see them. While there was an immediate notable dent in his finances, that R100 saved wouldn’t magically appear in his pocket in two years’ time.

I think about this when I think about what we – what the authorities, government, municipalities – could be spending money on to fix the future.

Making politics boring again

In this election, drowning in hyperbole (and the odd murder), it’s a bit of a losing game for serious politicians, for measured debate.

Yes, a stitch in time saves nine, but spending on long-term fixes and future-proofing is never sexy, especially when there are big issues happening right now, when people are hurting right now. This is true globally.

It’s like consistently eating well and exercising, knowing you’re setting yourself up for a stronger future, but you’ll remain oblivious to the diabetes that never happened or the knee replacement that you never needed.

It’s doing the unsexy, day-today, adult stuff now. Because we need a stockpile of baked beans, not all this farting into the wind. We need to make politics boring again.