Cape Town - Despite believing that voting in the 2019 national elections is a futile exercise, elderly Macassar resident Moses Matomela nevertheless went to cast his vote on Wednesday.
Wearing a bright yellow rain jacket and black leather cap, to shield himself against a light drizzle, 80-year-old Matomela of Sopraan Street leaned heavily on his trusted walking stick as he slowly trudged into the IEC’s polling station at Marvin Primary School.
Macassar resident Moses Matomela, 80, says he voted on Wednesday despite believing that the elections were futile. Video: Raphael Wolf
Having cast his secret ballot, prior to the usual procedure of having his ID Card checked by IEC staff members at the school’s gate and inside the polling station, and having the obligatory ink-mark made on his fingernail by an IEC staffer, Matomela quietly said “I have been voting from the first elections of Mandela. The current circumstances under which we live in Macassar, you can say that it is futile (to vote).
“My parents are not there anymore. They also voted (in apartheid’s Coloured Representative Council elections, but I am still just where I had always been (in struggling to survive).”
raphael.wolf@inl.co.za
South Africans are voting in the country's sixth general elections since the abolishment of apartheid 25 years ago.
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