Free State

And here is a plot of the latest Free State results:


(The plot axes are explained here.)

Election rigging!

Nah, I'm just kidding. But if the numbers on the News24 maps now are correct, the elections must have been rigged:



81% for the ANC! 12% for the UDM!!! Not so much - the votes add up to way more than 100% !

There must be a problem with their program :)
Maybe take their results with a pinch of salt... (You can download the official results from the IEC website. It is not very user friendly though, I am afraid.)

A completely different picture!

Here is the equivalent graph for the voting stations in the Western Cape:



I had better get to work so I am not going to comment on it. But isn't that just a completely different picture!

Election Results by Laura

My labmates and I have been eagerly watching the News24 election results map all day - it is quite wonderful! (It is here if you haven't seen it yet).

But we have also been lamenting that there are no graphs.

So here is my offering to the floor - a graph of the Eastern Cape votes counted so far. It shows the leading 5 parties, and the percentage of the vote they got in each voting district. (The voting districts are just each given a number on the x-axis).


See, isn't that fantastic! You can tell so much from this graph! That the ANC is doing well across the board, except for a few dips. The big dip towards the right must be a UDM stronghold - and if I go back and check what areas those polling stations were in, they were from the OR Tambo District. So that must be a large area of UDM support.

The DA and COPE are interesting. COPE has fair percentages across most polling stations, ranging between about 10 - 20%. The DA is different though - across most sites it has almost no support at all. But where it does have support, it has strong support, often beating the ANC.

I suppose (what do you think? perhaps I am wrong?) that it is because DA votes are concentrated in primarily white suburbs, where a vast majority of people vote DA. COPE votes, however, are move evenly spread across urban, rural, opulent and impoverished areas. And perhaps more evenly spread across racial lines too?

The ID doesn't have much support. But the areas where it does have support are also areas of strong DA support - I suppose the ID and DA appeal to similar sections of the electorate. But here is another interesting thing - DA and ID peaks pretty much always go together. But there are COPE peaks where there are no DA and ID voters. What is that telling us? That COPE was getting votes from areas that are not traditionally opposition party strongholds. In other words - in those areas COPE was taking previously ANC (or UDM) votes! Also interesting in that COPE and the UDM often have similar areas of strength.

Interesting!

I'll make a map of the Western Cape for curiosity's sake too quick, then I had better work!

Election party

My friends and I decided to have an election party. But we live in a block of flats so we have limited options party wise, unless we sucker someone else into letting us use their house as a venue. Which is a mission. So we were trying to think of something fun we could do to celebrate the elections. Because it is important to celebrate these things! (We celebrated freedom day last year, for example).

Se we eventually came up with "30 Seconds: SA Election 2009 edition" - we are going to play the board game 30 seconds, but make our own additional South Africa and election themed cards to supplement the original cards. I have been charged with making the cards. The words I have to put on the cards, so far, are:

affirmative action, alive with possibility, African Renaissance, Alan Boesak, alliance, aluta continua, arms deal, Ballot paper, Bantu Holomisa, black diamonds, black economic empowerment, Blade Nzimande, bourgeois, broad based black economic empowerment, bus rapid transit, cadre, campaign, civil society, coalition, cock a snook, Colonisation, commission of enquiry, comrade congress of the people, conscientise, constitution, COPE, Cosatu, counter revolutionary, crime, Currie Cup, Deborah Patter, democracy, deploy, Desmond Tutu, Drankensburg, Elections, emigrate, Eskom, Evita Bezuidenhout, fifa world cup, food parcels, food security, freedom, gautrain, Gwede Mantashe, Helen Zille, Hugh Masikela, Human rights, Imbizo, Independant Electoral Commission, informal settlement, Interface, investigation, Isidingo, Jacob Zuma, judiciary, Julius Malema, Kgalema Motlanthe, KFC, lambast, land reform, liberation, Luthuli house, Madiba, Mafikizolo, Mahendra, Mangosuthu, Msholozi, Buthelezi, manifesto, MEC, Miriam Makeba, mobilise, Motorcade, national democratic revolution, National Prosecuting Authority, Nelson Mandela, Nkandla, Nkosi Sikeleli, opposition party, Orlando Pirates, Outcomes Based Education, parliament, Patricia de Lille, Polokwane, premier league, president, province, rainbow nation, rally, reconciliation, republic, Rivonia, ruling party, rural development, SABC, SAFM, scorpions, Sevende Laan, Steven Friedman, swart gevaar, Table mountain, Task team, tender, Terror Lekota, Thabo Mbeki, Third degree, Thulasizwe Simelani, trade union, transformation, travelgate, treatment action campaign, Trevor Manuel, two-thirds majority, ubuntu, UDM, Umkhonto we Sizwe, umshini wam, Union buildings, universal franchise, vuvuzela, woodwork, Zapiro, Zwelinzima Vavi

I was trying to strike a balance between ones people are more likely to know, and ones people are less likely to know! I'm still thinking up more - anyone want to contribute some? :)

Just for fun

Some posters I saw outside the local Pick 'n Pay last year:

Three words on Umshini Wam

Listen, its not my favorite song. I don't sing it in the shower or hum it as I walk to campus.

But, you know... really.

It seems to me that this is a classic case of much fuss being made about nothing.

As far as I understand, it was a song sung in a certain time period in our history. When young men hopped the border and were trained to fight. And the machine gun, it was part of that. The armed struggle - was it right, was it wrong, did it do more harm than gooda? Was it necessary? I don't know. I'd rather like to know more about it. But whatever way you answer those questions, the fact remains that some South African's took up arms in the hopes of winning their freedom. And it was part of how we came to be here today, a democratic society.

And to remember that aspect of our past? Surely its okay to remember? To sing the songs people sang then? Isn't that part of remembering? And some people sacrificed a lot to be a part of that. Soldiers fighting for a free South Africa. They are worth remembering, I think.

So me myself, I don't really have a problem with "Umshini wam." Unless there is a verse that translates "I am going to shoot Laura with my machine gun if she doesn't vote for the ANC on the 22nd." If there is, gosh, please let me know and I will change my mind. But for the moment, I really don't have a problem with the song.

And I think that the irony here is that if people had not made a fuss about it in the first place, it wouldn't be so widely sung at all.

Perhaps I'm wrong. But it seems to me that the reason there are Umshini wam ring tones, that it is sung in election queues and at all ANC events, is just ANC members being defiant in the face of disapproval from some sectors of society. How dare they say we can't sing this song that is meaningful to us! We will sing it! We will sing it at every possible occasion! And, ha, there is nothing you can do to stop us!

And the problem is that getting angry about Umshini wam is really majoring on a minor minor issue. And when you major on minors, the actual problems get overlooked. There are real reasons to be concerned about the ANC. But we get too caught up being outraged over Umshini wam and other such small things. So there is no time to listen and think and engage, and offer informed criticism.

Yup, those were my three or so words on umshini wam.

We're poor people

I had all of these ideas for blog topics, but they have all just entirely escaped me. Oh well.

I'm busy watching Blood Diamond with some friends. Having just finished an argument about Zuma/Mbeki and a discussion about the EAC (East African Community).

Ah this is a sad movie. What they do to these child soldiers especially.

I was all ready to blog about the NPA announcement, but I'm just over it now. All I have to say on that matter is to share a proverb I remembered today: "When two bulls fight, the grass suffers."

Instead let me tel you about a terrible faux pas I made a few days ago. I was in Pick 'n Pay shopping with my digsmate. We were walking past the meat section, and I noticed these huge rolls of polony, and I said...

*pause here*
You need some background. Firstly, I had recently been speaking to my digsie about the sad state of my bank account, and were were commiserating about our lack of money.
Now you know when you hang out with the same people for many years, you develop your own slang. One of our slang phrases is "we are poor people." I don't know where it came from, but it is said with a certain itonation and it is just a way of saying that we don't have any money.
Okay, secondly, I quite like polony. My digsmate loathes it.
*unpause*

... and I said something along the lines of, "Hey, lets get one of those polonys, because we are poor people!"

!!!

Now I was really just teasing my digsmate about her polony aversion, using a turn of phrase we always use.

But *woops* - because that is not what it looked like! It looked like I was mocking poor people eating polony!! Eish. A man walking past gave me quite a look!

I should watch my tongue!