"Why I am spoiling my ballot"

In an opinion piece published in City Press last year, outspoken writer TO Molefe boldly declared that he was going to spoil his ballot in protest during the upcoming elections. He explained that many people have reacted in shock to his decision.

“Others think I lose my right to complain or that it’s sacrilege – that I’m pissing on the memory of those who bled and died so that I could vote. But the mechanistic act of putting a cross on a ballot isn’t what people died for. They died in part for the right of each of us to have an equal say. At present, owing to arrangements in how political parties are funded, we don’t all have an equal say,” wrote Molefe.

People’s Assembly caught up with Molefe to ask his whether he is still considering spoiling his ballot. Without hesitation he answered yes, adding, “Because of the way political parties are funded and because there is no regulation, donors have an outsize influence; they have more influence than one person one vote” Molefe said.

He added that we saw this in the failed merger of DA and Agang, where a London based funder arranged for the parties to merge and “with the kinds of strings the Guptas pull with the South African government”.

Molefe goes on to question that if we are seeing this with actions such as the Waterkloof wedding plane scandal then what is to stop party funders from influencing policy?

In his City Press article, Molefe argues, “as the Marikana massacre showed, powerful business and foreign interests have the ears of our politicians, and effective control of the police service we elect politicians to oversee”.

Molefe is not just stopping with spoiling his ballot. He told People’s Assembly that he “is involved in other forms of democratic participation” such as the My Vote Counts Campaign that is advocating for more transparency in private party funding.

“The regulation of party funding has been on the agenda for the chief whips since 1997 and the ANC passed a resolution about it at their Polokwane conference, but nothing has been done because the situation benefits them”.

Molefe ended his City Press article by arguing: “ The most direct message we can send – to tell them that they must legislate for an equal say for all, immediately – is for us to refuse to lend legitimacy to this skewed system by spoiling our ballots.” Unfortunately, South Africa does not include a None Of The Above (NOTA) box on our ballots so that a vote of no confidence could be distinguished from a ballot spoilt for other reasons.