Phillip vanNiekerk
>From the Editor’s Desk
Back in 1987 I helped a friend who was standing for the Labour Party in the northern England seat of Grimsby in the election of that year.
The constituency organiser was a man whose day job was a garbage collector for the council and he had a grimy set of cards, dating back to Clement Attlee, of every potential Labour voter in the constituency. Through the day, they were neatly sorted into two piles – those who had voted and those who hadn’t.
Our job was to go around and find the waverers, drunks and little old ladies who hadn’t voted by the afternoon, and shepherd them to the polls.
Anyone could have told the Labour faithful they were on a hiding to nothing. But they believed up until the moment the results started to come through – with news of another Thatcher landslide – that they were in with a sporting chance.
Just as the gloom became unbearable, the volunteer tea ladies put down their pots and sang a rousing rendition of the Internationale. The workers had lost another battle but the cause was just and victory would one day be theirs.
I have always loved elections with the same passion as great sporting events.
The first rule of a good election is that the losers never say die. I think that’s what’s wrong with South Africa in 1999.
The gap between the African National Congress and the rest is so huge that not the most deluded optimist has any doubt about the outcome. It’s like South Africa playing Malawi at cricket.
The only issue that has had any legs, really, has been the controversy around editors’ endorsements. Responses to our decision to endorse the ANC have once more exposed the schizophrenic nature of what was once politely known as the rainbow nation.
Many white readers, particularly those who peruse our Internet stablemate, the Daily Mail & Guardian, did not take the news well. Many fell victim to the misunderstanding that a newspaper compromises its objectivity when it endorses a political party.
Far from being a deviation, it is common practice all over the English-speaking world to endorse a political party and I can assure you that the Mail & Guardian will continue to report on important issues without fear or favour.
We endorsed the ANC in 1994 and no one, least of all Thabo Mbeki, would accuse us of giving the government an easy ride during the past five years.
One cynic thought our endorsement was akin to the turkey voting for Christmas. Other whites revealed a disturbing pent-up hatred for the new South Africa. Black readers, on the whole, reacted positively.
It is a pity that the responses were colour-coded but a good public controversy does at least put some of the sport back into the contest.
That’s what I thought, anyway, until I looked on the website and saw that the plans of a Nylstroom businessman to market baboon meat to Central Africa got three times more reader response. I suppose that’s because at least the baboons still have a sporting chance.