Twenty years ago, I queued for six hours in Johannesburg to vote in South Africa’s first democratic election. Today, I got that time down to three and a half hours, in London.
When I was there, the queue was standing eight abreast, snaking all the way across Trafalgar Square in front of the National Gallery - and back again. All told (including travel), that was six and a half hours out of my day, just exceeding that of 1994, when the polling station was ten minutes walk away. Very conveniently, when I was done I found that the exit came out next door to the “Halfway to Heaven” gay bar. After standing for hours in the sun, a cold pint was obviously an appropriate reward. Others obviously had the same idea. The place was full of South Africans slaking their thirst - but I don’t think too many of them realized they’d stumbled into a gay bar.
Others had made more effort than I had done. A couple next to me in the queue had driven four hours up from Bristol, queued three hours with a toddler in tow - and faced another four hour drive home again. Others were outside the embassy bright and early: pictures on Twitter show the queue already formed at 6:15, waiting for voting to begin. Inside the voting station, one official said she had been on site since 3:00 this morning, getting things ready. In just over seven days, they’ll start counting - and I’ll start the long wait for results.
By way of total contrast, in just a few weeks I’ll walk a few hundred yards from home to a local polling booth to vote in the European election, where I do not expect to queue for more than a few minutes - if at all.
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- Mandela: “Freedom Is a Process, Not an Event” (queeringthechurch.com)
