Paddy Harper: Will the Covid-19 cigarette ban come back to burn the ANC?

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Wednesday.

With five days to go until our first socially distant election, I’m wondering how many voters — myself included — will practice social distancing on election day and stay at home instead of making their mark on a ballot paper. 

After all, we’ve spent nearly two years staying in the pozi  —  at the instruction of those who are now telling us to forget their fear of Covid-19 and come out and vote for them — so it will be hardly surprising if a fair number of potential voters go on a personal level five  lockdown on Monday.

There’s also the sad reality that more than a few of those who were elected in 2016 have spent the past five years socially distancing themselves from the punters who voted for them — or against them — and will do the same thing as soon as they get their council paycheck on 15 November.

Then again, all the cigarette smokers who were treated like criminals for months last year may end up hitting the polling stations in their droves, baying for revenge against Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and the rest of the team that made them suffer for no good reason.

People who had handled the past 19 years reasonably sanely suddenly became snarling, spitting wolverines, all fangs and political conspiracy theories and howls for vengeance on polling day against Dlamini-Zuma, Police Minister Bheki Cele and the rest of their tormentors.

When people zol.

What if all the boozers who suffered — and may still end up suffering in the next move back to a boozeless level two and beyond in the fourth wave, which is likely to follow the election — stay out of the pubs long enough to vote against team teetotal on Monday?

Will the populace forgive (and forget) the weeks on end of no rotisserie chicken, no flip flops, no beach and give those in charge another five years on the municipal payroll and stay at home — or vote for more of the same? Or will they be seeking to even the score?

Perhaps ciggies, beer and fishing bans will end up sparking a run on the polls — and a change in the status quo — after two decades of looting, political muppetry, power cuts and water shortages failed to do so.