Running for Office Voluntary Imprisonment

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Kamala Harris, U.S. Vice President with husband Douglas Emhoff. Photo credit: online pic.

I don’t know why anybody in their right mind would want to be president or prime minister. I don’t like being caged, regulated. I was in solitary confinement for a year some years back. That’s why I have a phobia for a bunch of keys. It’s a reminder of the prison guard’s keys opening the cell, to slide plates towards me.

So you want to be the next member of parliament (MP), mayor, governor or congress woman? No problem. Just check the cupboard first, because skeletons have the uncanny ability to miraculously add meat to bones, inject a voice and expose your dirty past. 

‘But I was young and foolish.’ YouTube millionaires have kicked that notion to the curb. Try another excuse. Past history also becomes the present when what you did during Spring Break in Miami or Mexico many years ago, makes its way to Twitter, complete with interesting photos.

Forget about privacy. You walk around with a calculator and a scale because you must count and weigh your words. Also remove words like 9-5, weekends and vacation from your vocabulary. Coffee with your cousin who bleached her hair yellow, might be turned into a question. Who’s the blonde?  You cannot pick your noise in public, no matter how itchy. There’s always a live camera around. You cannot disagree with your husband at a cocktail party for the same reason.

Cellphones have replaced air.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.

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