As it turns out, the salesperson's claim that I can reclaim VAT when I leave back to Switzerland, was wrong. I can't reclaim VAT, even if I'm living abroad, because I have a South African passport. So what, I must pay VAT in South Africa, and pay import tax in Switzerland? Are they serious? Yea, they are. It sounds like that wasn't the case when we were living in NL back in the early 1990's.
On the other hand, I can't vote! Why? Because I'm living abroad. So while I can't claim back VAT when taking stuff back to Switzerland because I have a passport — I'm enough of a South African citizen/resident for that — I'm not enough of a citizen/resident to be allowed to vote. And that definitely wasn't the case back in the early 90's.
Lovely, aint it, when those in power change the voting laws to ensure they have less competition. Too many non-ANC-voting South Africans spending 2 years in London. Can't have them vote for the opposition now, can we?
More Thoughtfulness
Look, I'm not saying it's wrong. I mean, we don't pay taxes in South Africa, um, income tax that is. But I have yet to find a person from another country that doesn't fall off their chair when I tell them I can't vote.
And I feel a little uncomfortable playing the "discrimination against non-ANC South Africans living abroad" card, for all I know the law was changed before the ANC had the power, but if I sit back and think rationally, that is really the only explanation I can come up with for why such a change was made. (If I were a good journalist, I'd go digging to find out why this was the case. But I'm not, I don't get paid for rants like these, and there's not many people reading them.)
For what it's worth, there's mypetition.co.za petition. I don't know if such petitions mean much, but at least they'll probably inform ya if we suddenly do get voting rights. Because Helen Zille was campaigning to get us voting rights. Back in November. No news...
5 responses so far ↓
1 Charl Botha // Fri Jan 9 21:44:27 2009
During the general elections in 2004, I also could not vote (for the same reason). To add insult to injury, convicted prisoners were allowed to vote: http://cpbotha.net/2004/03/03/prisoners-are-allowed-to-vote-im-not/
Nice!
2 Hugo // Fri Jan 9 23:18:36 2009
Prisoners are allowed to vote this year as well. So we're certainly worse than criminals for daring to work outside of the country. Ditto for the people that are working in London to pay off student loans, i.e. taking money back to South Africa. Worse-than-criminals, the whole lot of them!
3 Hazard // Sat Feb 21 19:17:23 2009
It is a traversty. Bringing back foreign currency into this country is doing far more than what criminals are doing for this country. I can't say as a prisoner you have no rights. But I do believe that as a prisoner, you forfeit the right to freedoms, such as voting rights, otherwise what's the point of the judicial and correctional process.Surely as a non contributive and destructive (due to criminal activities)member of society, you should have no say to the happenings and control of the country. I would like to know what other democratic countries allow these rights to prisoners.
4 Hugo // Sun Feb 22 20:11:56 2009
Some interesting developments: seems we will be able to vote, if we go to quite some trouble to get it organised, in the next few days. I'll try to share that kind of info soon...
Hmmm, I know in the 90s The Netherlands used to grant voting rights to illegal immigrants, I can hear from one of the Dutch guys (e.g. my manager) whether that is still the case.
5 Hugo // Sun Feb 22 20:13:18 2009
And I suppose it comes down to historical stuff: political prisoners. They'd want e.g. Nelson Mandela to be able to vote while he was in prison... from that perspective it kinda makes sense? If it's against political abuse... but that idea certainly doesn't translate well to the typical Pollsmoor inhabitant.
Leave a Comment
Comments can be formatted using reStructuredText.