2019 ELECTIONS: We should be grateful for boring elections By Carien Du Plessis carienduplessis
There was this hot guy on Kenyan television a few days after that country’s general election on 8 August 2017. His name was Ezra Chiloba and he was the chief electoral officer. It fell to him to read out all the results in all the constituencies. My female election observer companions and I took to making mirth about the man nicknamed “Chilobae”.
Kenyans say the electioneering never really stopped, and just more than a year after President Uhuru Kenyatta’s inauguration for a second term, the country is in full elections mode again.Just across our border, in Zimbabwe, in August 2018, there was much buzz about the first election following the ouster of former president Robert Mugabe. Opposition parties thought their time had come at last, and the campaigning was a little less tense than previously.
In 2011, Malema called then DA spokesperson Lindiwe Mazibuko a “tea girl”. Electioneering in South Africa was firmly in the gutter, and newspaper sales were doing well. It was exciting. With the birth of the EFF and its participation in the 2014 elections, things got even hotter. Malema’s campaign was on steroids and no ANC elder could reign him in.
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