Nkosazana Zuma and Louis Luyt are taking pep-up pills from spin doctors
Ferial Haffajee
It cost a lot, but the R2,8-million which Minister of Health Nkosazana Zuma splashed out on improving her image and that of her department is paying dividends.
Watch her: there’s a softer touch; less defensive and more confident. The three Bills she pushed through Parliament recently involved pitting herself against powerful lobbies.
Yet with the help of a team of world-class spin doctors – Lowe, Bell & Mann, whose British parent company helped Margaret Thatcher improve her image – Zuma has rebranded herself and her department. Her efforts to bring down drug prices and redistribute the spread of doctors by sending newly qualified medical students to rural areas has seen less of the rubbishing by the press which greeted her previous policy changes.
“We’re a lot less defensive,” says the Health Department’s director-general Olive Shisana, adding that they now target their communication drive at those who benefit from policy changes and don’t use all their energies responding to lobby groups like the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers’ Association and the Young Doctors Association. A recent exercise in spin strategy saw the Health Department open its 350th clinic at just the time its three controversial Bills were set for the final battle in Parliament.
A phone-in show on SAfm recently showed great support levels from a white and largely affluent audience for Zuma’s “bravery” in taking on the medical aid industry and trying to find ways of making drugs cheaper. (She has always enjoyed support on stations like Ukhozi FM and Lesedi FM, whose mainly Zulu- and Sotho- speaking listeners have gained from the clinic and free health-care programmes she designed. )
Scan through the pages of the more critical mainstream English media and notice how much more fair the coverage of the Health Department has become.
Prior to the appointment of the new image- makers, it appeared one of the bigger government basket cases, stumbling from crisis to crisis – the misspending of millions of rands on the ill-fated Sarafina 11 play being the most memorable.
Most old government departments, like Zuma’s, inherited a communications directorate where “communication” was often a misnomer for those who were skilled in witholding information rather than ensuring its free flow. They are in the main staffed by bureaucrats with none of the conventional bag of tricks any self- respecting spin-doctor owns: regular press releases; briefings with editors; well-run mass campaigns, knowledge about damage control and early warning systems to counter the smooth lobbies which people with money, like the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries, can afford.
William Leach, the managing director of Saatchi&Saatchi, says “communication is vital
to governments. They stay in office by effectively telling the electorate of their policy successes.” That’s why most governments of industrialised countries are among the biggest advertising spenders; the R2,8-million spent by Zuma is but a fraction of what her British and American counterparts fork out on spin-doctors and image-makers.
But Lowe, Bell & Mann are loath to call themselves “image-makers”. The company’s representative Mark Turnbull is sensitive about the gravy-train allegations which greeted his company’s netting of the communications tender. He will not talk about how his company is spending the tax- rands, though another member of the team stresses that the money is being used only to train Zuma’s communications department. Three people have been identified as key representatives and they will be extensively trained to respond to information requests quickly and to communicate policy better.
But image consultants say there is still a lot of work to do on Zuma herself.
Zuma is perceived to stick doggedly to an ideology. Communications strategist Denise Bjorkman adds: “The public sees only a woman with a mission and they don’t like it.”
Instead Zuma needs to take a page or two from President Nelson Mandela’s schmooze guide, suggests image consultant Vanessa Bluen. “He gets it just right. Who else would think of putting on a rugby jersey or a Bafana Bafana top?” Other ministers who score tops with confident, professional images across a range of audiences are Thabo Mbeki, Mac Maharaj and Kader Asmal.
That’s mostly because they know what they’re talking about and “have the facts at their fingertips”, says Leach. But while brainpower is the foundation of a good image, how you look and sound is also important. A voice consultant said that Zuma’s voice “lacks authority” and that she needed to sound more confident.
Most fashion fundis we approached declined to speak on the record; but the consensus view on Zuma’s appearance was “matronly”, “frumpy” and “stuffy”. That’s because “she has too much substance to be chasing the `best-dressed woman’ of the land title”, believes Bjorkman, adding: “She discounts the myth that only appearances count in politics. She is not governed by the axioms of the Western TV age, that a female politician must have looks, accessories and glamour.”
But the TV age has landed on our shores and politicians are becoming more and more aware of their image as witnessed by Jay Naidoo’s funky Chinese suits, Patricia de Lille’s new braids, Geraldine Fraser- Moleketi’s chic cropped haircut and Thabo Mbeki’s pipe.
There are also more and more goverment departments turning to the professionals for help.