A Cautionary Tale.

During my senior years at Catholic Primary School, I ruled the playgrounds and prayer rooms with an iron fist, a curious little artifact I picked up at the Green Point flea market a while back. I was the senior class captain, a prestigious title I held for several years, despite there being elections every second month.

Victory was always assured however, either through intimidation of voters by Dawid, the 17 year old grade 7 pupil I kept on my payroll, or through blatant bribery, making use of the early bloomer Candice Zaaiman, who would let the boys touch her bum in the small playground at the back of the school.

As is usually the case, the absolute power I possessed began going to my head, and I turned into a bit of a tyrant. I started taking away playground space from the Sub A's and B's and giving them to my friends. I took away the soccer balls from the richer kids, and gave them to the poorer ones - even the ones who didn't play soccer - as I just didn't like the richer kids, who had nicer shoes than I did.

Basically I became quite the young little arsehole, which eventually lead to the formation of the group called the Make a Different Captain, or the MDC for short. This group of disgruntled kids managed to suck up to rest of the pupils by feeding them Chappies bubble gums and not beating them up on Tuesdays, as I would usually do, and so when the elections came, I knew I was pretty f**ked.

The thing was, I had so much clout at the time, that I was still able to manipulate things. I couldn't rig the actual votes, as it was handled by old Sister Solomon, who was QUITE incorruptible, despite my best efforts to sway her. What I COULD do however, was delay and procrastinate on things, such as hiding the box away, getting Dawid to sit on the heads of the official counters etc. This carried on for so long, that I eventually graduated from school STILL the senior class captain, this despite the fact that the elections were held months earlier, which meant I got to keep the shiny badge, which I still have in my little box of memories I keep under the bed.

I am reminded of this episode, after watching the shenanigans taking place in Zimbabwe.


F**k You, Colonialist Pigs.

Let's face it, it was silly and naive to think that Robert Mugabe would just walk off quietly into the sunset. The man has been running the country for 28 years, that's almost as long as one of my grandfather's after dinner speeches.

Voting him out was never going to be so easy.

From the looks of things, the ZEC are going to procrastinate and drag things out for as long as it takes, giving Robert the leeway to hold onto his shiny badge and leave on his own terms.

They clearly have the chutspah to do it. Can they though? Let's see how things play out.



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