Not certain which political party deserves your vote in two weeks' time? Fear not, because a website designed to assist you make up your mind is available.
Cilliers du Preez, the administrator and creator of http://www.vote2009.co.za/, told The Star he decided to create the website last month because a large number of his friends had no idea which political party to vote for or even where to begin.
"I had a lot of friends who kept saying 'I don't know who to vote for', so, after hearing this so many times, I started thinking," he said.
An electrical engineer by trade, the Gauteng resident downloaded the manifestoes of the eight most prominent political parties - the ACDP, ANC, Cope, DA, ID, IFP, UDM and FF Plus - and analysed them.
"I compiled a list of current issues and tried to find the solution each party offers for it in their manifesto. I extracted the paragraphs applicable to the issue into a database and then compiled a list of these into a simple 14-question process," he said.
Du Preez said he chose the most pertinent issues South African voters will bear in mind when casting their vote on April 22 - crime, education, healthcare, HIV/Aids, affirmative action, the Scorpions, the death penalty, issues of agriculture and land reform, and welfare.
He put together 14 multiple-choice questions which site visitors are required to answer, and based on their choices, the answers are tallied and compared with the various political parties represented.
You then select the answer you most strongly agree with and press the next button. At the end, your results are put into table form, showing, for each political party, how many questions out of the 14 reflect your sentiments, as well as the percentage.
When you click onto the political parties' logo on the table, you will get to a page where you can check how your answers correlate or don't correlate with the different party manifestoes. "Life is more complicated than 14 simple questions, but it might just help you make a decision on who to vote for in the elections," Du Preez said. To date almost 7 000 people have visited the site, which was created three weeks ago.
Du Preez advises site visitors that the topics covered in the questionnaire are issues that are important to himself, but perhaps not to everyone.
"One issue that has been raised by a visitor is that the questions are not completely objective. These questions are what is important in my life, so it might not be for everyone out there," he explained.
Trade union Solidarity has also established a similar "election helper" questionnaire, comprising 12 questions. Solidarity's interactive questionaire. Deputy general secretary Dirk Hermann said the questionnaire was inspired after a survey compiled for the union's members revealed that 91 percent of them would vote.
"We approached the political parties with a set of questions on various topics which the parties answered," he said.
He explained that the eight political parties - which are the same as the vote2009 options - represented in the questionnaire were the most popular parties that emerged from the union's initial survey. However, COPE failed to provide the union with answers.
Hermann stressed that the union was politically independent and that the questionnaire had been set up as a tool to assist its members in making an informed decision.
Test your political temperature here - www.vote2009.co.za
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