HOW TO MAKE YOUR COUNT...

Today we are all going out to vote for our favoured candidates to represent our constituencies in the next Parliament.

This is not small responsibility. There is an overwhelming need for the electorate to make measured and well calculated decisions when we cast our vote. This means there is no room at all to make selfish choices, casting votes that will be self-serving.
Foremost there is a need for a younger representation in decision making structures in the kingdom. If you deny the validity of this statement, consider that you may well be the problem.

Head screwed

There is a strong need to have young people occupy spaces of some influence – not to fulfil a quota but rather to indicate that we are indeed a country with its head screwed on right, a country that appreciates that there is value young people can bring to the table.
For too long there have been grey-haired gatekeepers, making sure we defer to them for any and everything.
Except this hasn’t always been successful in the past and there are far too many things to reference to support this assertion. We have had funds in Eswatini, which were targeted at tackling youth unemployment but the people meant to manage them failed to sustain those funds for whatever reasons.

We continue to struggle with timely disbursements of scholarship allowances, forcing students to rely on their own devices to keep body and soul stitched together, often this means them falling prey to terrible influences.
To an extent I find it difficult to blame the older people tasked with ensuring these things run smoothly. It is in our national make up to defer to those older than us, to trust implicitly that they have our best interests at heart.  The stark truth however, is that they do not. We can no longer afford to rely only on the actions of our elders because they simply do not know how to prioritise us.  Those who suffer in the end are the youth, who we borrow the world from not the elders who continue to move as though it is inherited from them. So please, vote for young people.
Stop underestimating the value we bring. Vision 2022 is abstract for the elderly but for us young people it is tangible, it is something we can even visualise beyond infrastructural projects. 


Practicing journalism

It is, and can be for everyone, a way of life that improves the quality of that life.
Another issue I’d like us to be mindful of is the ‘women don’t vote for women’ idea. A few years ago when I was a practicing journalist, the Media Institute of Southern Africa’s Swaziland chapter took myself and other journalists from other media houses to rural Swaziland.  This was around the time of the last National General Elections and the purpose was to speak specifically to women to find out their attitudes on voting for women.
My findings were that this statement ‘women don’t vote for women’ is true.

I was disappointed and discouraged especially because the reasons ranged from bese bayadvwala to umfati akabe asatsintseka angaphatsa. It was interesting to me because that felt like rhetoric men say over and over again to convince us we are not deserving of leadership positions.

Also why is there this bewildering need for a woman in any position of influence or power to be friendly. You don’t vote for men because they will smile at you when you run into them, so why is that expectation placed on women?  If a woman is unapproachable kutsiwa wadvwala noma akatsintseki, however if a man is the exact same kutsiwa unesitfunti. Shisa yena.

 In any case, this has always been an interesting thing for me because my point of departure on the matter is that it is an interesting way to absolve men of the duty to cast their votes for women, to elevate women in any way.


Submissive women
Everyone is so obsessed with this idea of women being submissive even in spaces where that trait is quite simply a liability. That woman who you find it difficult to talk to because akangeneki will take that same resolve to the august House and move motions that will improve your life.

The man whose charm you are besotted with will go to Parliament asineke nakhona since you’re all so obsessed with genial personalities in your leaders. This is a call to the electorate – men and women alike, stop for one second voting with your hearts but engage your minds instead. I have spent years writing this column and using this space to magnify the voices of women and young people and our experiences – six years in September to be precise. So you know I’m already partial.
But my interest as stated earlier in this column, is not to fill quotas but it is for the Parliament that makes laws that impact my life to be representative of me as a constituent, not only of Inkhundla yaseMtsambama but a citizen and constituent of the Kingdom of Eswatini.

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