ACDP tells voters to "choose life" as polls open, warning of "another 5 years of looting"
The party used election morning to cast the ballot as a choice between "blessing or cursing", quoting Deuteronomy and warning that a wrong vote leads to "death or curses".
The African Christian Democratic Party marked election day by telling voters to “choose life”, casting the ballot as a choice between “life or death, blessing or cursing” and warning that South Africa cannot afford “another 5 years of looting, corruption and failed promises which lead to death or curses”.
The party posted the message on its official X account on Wednesday morning, as millions of South Africans went to the polls to elect local government leaders for the next five years.
At the centre of the post is a quotation from Deuteronomy 30:19: “I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live.” The party drew a direct line from the verse to the ballot paper, writing that “just as the Lord gave Israel a choice between life or death, blessing or cursing, we too will be given a choice with a ballot paper”.
That ballot, the ACDP said, “will determine the leaders or political party, who will follow a path of life or death, blessing or cursing”.
The party’s argument against the record of its opponents is stated in a single sentence. “South Africa cannot afford another 5 years of looting, corruption and failed promises which lead to death or curses,” the post reads. It does not name any party or individual in making that charge.
The post closes with a direct appeal, “Choose life and vote ACDP”, and a greeting to its supporters: “Good morning saints.”
The ACDP’s election-day message is consistent with the party’s long-standing public identity as a Christian-democratic formation that argues its policy positions from scripture. The post sets out no specific municipal promises, no service-delivery commitments and no named local candidates, and it offers no detail on which councils it believes it can win or how it would govern them.
What it does do is place the act of voting inside a moral and religious frame, and address the party’s own base in the language of faith on the morning of the poll.
