Ae, ae, don’t you just love election time like me? It’s the only time that you see face-to-face those Very Veery Important People (VVIP).
Believe me you, it was also my first time to hear that there are VIPs and then there are VVIPs during the African Women’s Championship here. I now understand that one can be important, another can be importanter and then there are those that are the importantest – you know, like being dumb, dumberer and dumberest. Maybe the words are being revised in the new Webster dictionary, waalye.
But during election campaigns, no one is importantest, because all those people you only used to see behind television screens or in newspapers are actually mortal beings that breathe like you and me. Even the kwaai bodyguard that normally used to block you from shaking the hand of that VVIP can smile, vakuetu! And if you are lucky enough you can also dance with them, drink and chao with them, after all it’s election time.
I just love the vibe of elections, tjiri. Namibians from all walks of life look colourful, but it’s also the time you are afraid to be seen in certain colours, because even though you bought your bright kadress for that colour-block night at Zenso Lounge, you can’t be caught dead with those juvis during campaigns.
Everyone has mastered Photoshop these days and they can twist anything and before you know it, your photo that has been manipulated to look like you were sitting at a lonesome “star” rally under a tree somewhere would become viral on Facebook.
Eto, people can be vindictive; even wearing your favourite English soccer team jersey can be construed as campaigning indirectly for a particular political party.
It’s a time when all other matters take the backdoor, like the ncinas can now go on a ‘shopping spree’ with other people’s money, the skinderbekke can gossip freely without being slapped with a crimen injuria lawsuit, the loud neighbours can makiti wild till the wee hours of the morning and the kamborotos can don their mini skirts without being thrown in jail.
There are more important issues to concentrate on during elections, such as monitoring that people do not fight over whose tree it is; I just never knew that Namibians loved trees so much that they can moer each other black and blue over that.
But it’s not the supporters that amaze me the most as much as the political candidates do.
I know everyone of them is out there for popularity and gaining votes, but eish some of you and your promises, né.
The overnight typed up manifestos make me wonder hapo, what were some of you smoking on that you didn’t wanna share?
I also heard promises of going to the moon on donkey carts, aai wait, maybe I didn’t understand. Repeat tog again.
Then I heard about the N$3 billion bags full of nyuku hidden somewhere for us after we do the right thing at the ballot. The flip-flop politicians who say one thing one day and then clear their throats the next day with quotes like, “I was misquoted”.
“That journalist or media house has a personal vendetta against me and I don’t know why.” Hmmm…
Sorry Ngo!
Magreth Nunuhe