Poll position...

Voting day gave CHRIS BENNETT a little time to reflect during the short wait to make his mark.


VOTING day was a pleasant outing. A bit of a glitch when I got turned away at the first polling station, which was near my house, and was told I had to vote where I was registered, which was not too much further. My first choice of polling station had started to run out of papers at about 10am; the one at the Munster Sports Club had a short cue and a carnival atmosphere.

There was a good mood and all sorts of neighbours emerged from the woodwork.

The election was a great excuse for many people to take a bit of a break. For the price of a couple of days leave you got almost a week’s holiday. This would explain the crowds on our local beach. I counted nearly twenty people on the two kilometres of beach I walk. And three dogs.

The buzz word in this election seems to have been accountability, which gets trotted out, dusted off and paraded around for a few weeks prior to Election Day, when it is hidden at the back of some cupboard somewhere for the next four and a half years.

I looked it up in the dictionary, in fact in both of them. I also looked at Roget, another good way to clarify thoughts.

‘Dueness’ and ‘duty’ are the two words that leap from the page, closely followed by ‘responsibility’, ‘obligation’ and ‘the least one can do’.

Don’t you love that last one? Our council, comprised largely of fine men and women, may care to bear a few of these definitions in mind as we enter the next five years of life in the sunshine democracy. Having to explain to visitors who come down here twice a year why we still have a crumbling waterfront and a collapsed pier in Margate gets a bit tricky by
the third year.

The problem seems to me to be two pronged; on the one tine is the problem of knowing what to do or who to ask, and on the other is the problem of believing that we are their servants, not the other way round. Now I know some of you may be thinking that to see the masses as the boss is not the African way, the fact surely remains that we put our crosses against the party of our choice. It is that party which then becomes accountable. We, the people, are to be answered to.

Talking of visitors I am sure I saw a lot more Zimbabwean cars down here this time around. It is nice to know that once again the South Coast can help to bring sunshine and the seaside in to the lives of those up north. Well, some of them, anyway.

A friend who is a property developer was hoping to toddle over to meet up with old pals; she couldn’t make it because of work, which is a promising sign. The beauty of the South Coast and its lifestyle has not lost its allure it would seem.