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Election Day family news update
Ma came back from Australia last month, where she had been visiting Anton and Liezel in Sydney. They also spent a day or two in a nature reserve. If I ever get around to it, I will put some of the pictures from her trip on the Web site!
While in Australia she arranged for Anton to buy Pa two DVDs, one of which was a recording of a 24-hour concert called Swinging Bach, held in the market square of Leipzig about 4 years ago. Watching this concert reminded me that I wanted to learn to sing like Bobby McFerrin. It was so inspiring to see those thousands of people standing in the rain and being really happy to be there and singing.
Election 2004: I went and voted at the tennis courts at around midday. According to the Internet news, the election is going pretty smoothly in general. I think there are going to be several problems relating to bar-code stickers, though. I didn't have one, and apparently you are supposed to have them (no idea where to get them!), but I told the officials that if they looked on the voters' roll, they would find my name, which they did, so they let me vote. Another woman who didn't have one was not allowed to vote, because she was not on the voters' roll for the area, and she could not afford to go all the way to Wynberg where she had voted before. I didn't want to hold up the queue, otherwise I would have stood in the polling booth for a long time looking at all the different options which I wasn't going to pick, but which fascinate me anyway.
One nice thing about a democratic election is the way in which it makes everyone equal. Before the election, if you are rich or have good connections, or if you're intelligent, educated and charming, you can use these gifts to influence other people's choice. But on the day of voting, everyone is the same, the ugly person gets one vote and the pretty person gets one, the stupid and the clever get one each, the rich person can't get on the voter's roll if he wasn't on before, and the well-connected person can't jump the queue. The playing field is leveled even between the criminals and those who pride themselves in being law-abiding, because in South Africa, even those within prisons are allowed to vote. The educated person's vote counts the same as the illiterate person's vote. It's a nice reminder that the other man is your fellow man.
On the way back I saw an old woman walking along the road with a younger man, so I gave them a lift. The woman had a face badly scarred by burns. It must have been years ago, because everything had healed, but her features had been distorted, and her bottom lip had been turned inside-out. She walked with difficulty, so she was very pleased to not have to walk as far as she had thought. Her companion (probably her son) was a deaf mute, but his gestures were easy to understand. My vote is equal to her vote and to his vote.
It made me sad to think of a country like Zimbabwe where people's votes are disrespected so much, and where even the act of voting is such a tense and frightening thing. It is better not to be allowed to vote at all, or to live in a than to be given a right which cannot be exercised without a fight. (More about democracy...)
Click here to read about tonight...
Mikhailo has a backlog of work which could keep him busy for months. And in spite of placing advertisements, he has still not found a suitable personal assistant. Richters VegiCrisps (which he invented) went on the market this week. Several other projects, particularly the Rex project, are filling up his time. It is likely that we will co-present a food product development course soon, which I am quite excited about, because it will have excellent content, the likes of which you can't get anywhere else.
Ohann and Ilani have scheduled their wedding for the end of the year. It's always nice to have an excuse for a clan gathering.
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