Ayanda Kota

Elections should be a season of hope. Steve Biko declared that our fight was for an open society, a society where the colour of a person's skin will not be a point of reference or departure; a society in which each person has one vote.

James Kiawoin, a Liberian first-year student at Colorado College, recently wrote:

The new statistics on unemployment are out. There are two very serious problems. The first is that the way that these statistics are compiled counts begging, hawking and all kinds of things that people do just to survive as 'employment'. This is nothing but sleight of hand.

The Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM) was formed in August 2009 to respond to the crisis of unemployment and the commoditization of essential services in a society dominated by corruption and greed.

The centenary celebrations of the African National Congress (ANC) are being used to persuade the people that a movement that has betrayed the people is our government; a government that obeys the people, instead of a government of the elites, for the elites and by the elites.

The mass movements that have raised progressive governments to power in Latin America, the global financial crisis, the recent uprisings in the Arab world and the ongoing rebellion of the poor in our own country have all created more space for the left.

The eThembeni informal settlement was erected in 1992, before the dawn of our democracy. It was called eThembeni, ‘place of hope’, because the birth of a new nation, the birth of democracy was inevitable. But today people remain unemployed, living without income in mud houses.

On the 27th of April 1994 the people of this country stood in long queues for many hours, waiting to cast their vote for the first time. In some parts of the country the weather was indeed hostile, freezing cold, while in other parts of the country it was scorching hot.

31 March 2010

Dear Editor