The party has launched a two-pronged strategy to win voters in 2004
Marianne Merten
An African National Congress pamphlet blitz across the Cape Peninsula makes a significantly different pitch in English and Afrikaans to Cape Town’s white suburbs and the working class communities of the Cape Flats.
Tens of thousands of flyers titled From Divided Alliance to Divorced Alliance and Deurmekaar Alliansie Val Plat (Confused Alliance Falls Flat) were handed out at railway stations and dropped through postboxes last week.
The party’s provincial top brass kicked off the pamphlet campaign at Cape Town central station.
In keeping with the ANC strategy to exploit divisions within the Democratic Alliance in the long haul to the 2004 national elections, the pamphlets straddle a difficult divide: how to pitch at rich white Capetonians, the affluent black middle classes, workers and the poor.
The pamphlets’ treatment of controversy-dogged mayor Peter Marais is revealing. The Afrikaans pamphlet exploits the sympathy of many coloured voters for Marais and officials seen as victims of the street-naming fiasco, claiming Marais was used to canvass votes in coloured communities and rejected once the job was done.
In an apparent reference to Cape Town councillors Una Pick and Bonita Jacobs, implicated in the street-naming debacle, it says the DA has allowed criminal investigations against other coloured officials. “Brown DA councillors have now learned a hard lesson: they are good enough to win elections but too bad to rule.”
The English version avoids the appeal to race sympathies. It cites the treatment of Marais as an example of DA political expediency, saying: “You cannot use coloureds to win and push them aside later when embarrassment comes.”
It also places heavier emphasis on the “marriage difficulties” between the New National Party and Democratic Party, and makes a veiled appeal to Cape Town chauvinism: “Every day the DA is fighting. Tony Leon has to govern Cape Town from Johannesburg,” it says.
The Afrikaans version addresses lack of housing and land, evictions and water cut-offs, which recently led to chaotic protests in Tafelsig and elsewhere on the Cape Flats. It highlights the role of several DA councillors and officials in at least “houses-for-pals” allegations.
The English pamphlet focuses on the estimated R12-million spent on “DA publicity stunts” to improve its image and says “the DA is using public funds to fight internal party battles”, a sign of “a continuing litany of DA corruption”.
The difficulties of appealing to all are most clearly seen in the pamphlets’ stand on crime. The Afrikaans version emphasises the maldistribution of policing resources, complaining that while white areas have one policeman for every 600 people, “brown and black areas have one police officer for 4000 people”.
The English pamphlet sidesteps the distribution issue, merely asserting that crime has risen 27% under the DA, in contrast to the national trend.
The ANC believes it needs only 11% more voter support to win the Western Cape in 2004. Its two-pronged electoral strategy to highlight the DA’s internal difficulties and its elitist policies, while reinforcing the benefits of national ANC-led programmes emerges from a discussion document prepared for the upcoming provincial congress: Planning for Power: A Three-Year Strategic Plan for the Western Cape.
The strategy relies heavily on the support of national office bearers and government officials. It has been visible in recent months, with tours of the townships by various Cabinet ministers. President Thabo Mbeki declared parts of the flood-ravaged Cape Flats a disaster zone with unprecedented speed.