As South Africans prepare to vote in our April 2009 election it is time to steer away from all this negativity, this overwhelming perpetual obsession and media over-saturation with stories of crime and corruption. Let us not get distracted now and pay a little more attention to the real issues that affects our society. Food, housing, water, electricity, health services and most important of all education. Let us elect those leaders who are sensitive to our needs, listening to our people and hold them accountable through strengthening our democracy and our democratic institutions. Let us firmly and unanimously reject all those academics and experts and analysts and advisors who keep on informing  us that our future as a nation is controlled by “the market” and that we are in fact governed by “foreign investors”.  Because if that is the case - what is the point of having elections and a democracy at all ?

Let us listen to the great spirit of Fela when he reminded us again that our destiny is in our own hands.