Voting for democracy was a dream come true
Coming back home after almost 20 years in exile, and voting for the very first time in 1994 for democracy was a dream come true for many of us who had yearned for freedom and fought apartheid to bring about this new order in South Africa. Going into exile itself is a nightmare. One does …
Coming back home after almost 20 years in exile, and voting for the very first time in 1994 for democracy was a dream come true for many of us who had yearned for freedom and fought apartheid to bring about this new order in South Africa.
Going into exile itself is a nightmare. One does not know the conditions and pitfalls that lie ahead. It’s like venturing into the unknown and into the darkness of a lightless tunnel.
That tunnel may have been dark and the end not so nigh, but we believed one day we would see the light at the end of it.
In exile, one ventures into the unknown – not knowing where your next meal will come from, where you will lay your head to rest, who you are going to meet and what the reception will be like, and above all, not knowing what the future holds for you.
But when the news of the pending release of Nelson Mandela filtered through, though unbelievable as it was, it finally sank in when we saw him walk free in the world on TV news stations, and ultimately making that trip to Lusaka in Zambia to meet his comrades. We had to pinch ourselves several times to make sure we were not in deep sleep.
I was then a senior reporter for the Botswana Gazette in Gaborone and made the trip to Lusaka on assignment from my editor and former member of parliament in Botswana, Mrs Clara Olsen – and came face to face with this ‘awesome’ man, Mandela who was hand-in-hand with his then-wife, Winnie.
To me that was the beginning of my trip back home, although I tracked back more than a few kilometres deep into Africa rather than just jumping the Botswana border and landing in the City of Gold – Johannesburg.
Coming home in late 1992 and voting in 1994 in one of the world’s most peaceful elections after the turbulent era of apartheid is one thing I will treasure most in my memories.
Joining those long, winding, endless queues reminded me of my times in Zambia when there were similar queues for food items in grocery shops.
Having cast my vote, I shouted to my comrades and colleagues and the public at large at the Saratoga Roman Catholic Parish in Berea: “I have voted for democracy, I have voted for a free South Africa, I have voted for equality, equal rights, freedom and dignity. I have voted to free both black and white South Africans from the mental bondage of apartheid.”
But little did we know that this democracy would one day descend into the greed we see today, into the plunder that is happening, into the looting which is a daily occurrence in many African countries, and is the source of endless war, coups and genocides as we continue to see in Rwanda, Central African Republic, Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Leone – the list is endless.
Watch out brothers and sisters, lo and behold, for that is also coming our way. We shall chase each other with spears, pangas, AKs, machetes and many more weapons of mass destruction. It may not happen in my lifetime, your lifetime, their lifetime but it surely will one day.
Those who care to vote can go and do so, my time is up!
