Hitting the road with Dad is the only way 14-year-old Albertina Bloem gets to see her African National Congress MP father during the school holidays.
“It’s irritating,” she admits with a giggle, but her father, Dennis Bloem, has promised she will be in time for her appointment at the hair salon. Then it’s back to dealing with abuses of Free State farm workers.
“They have voted for the ANC and we have said ‘A better life for all’. That’s what I’m trying to do,” says Bloem senior. That includes trying to assist the Winburg farm worker who was sacked for bringing a criminal complaint against the supervisor who flattened his home with a tractor.
Hearth and home are left behind as MPs get on the election trail early. “There is no life until after the election,” says one ANC MP. As instructed by party bosses, he’s out in his constituency. The first voter-registration weekend is next month.
Although the 2004 election campaigns have not yet officially started, electioneering is in full swing already. For months now, MPs have been juggling parliamentary and party-political obligations.
And ANC MPs are under additional pressure over their jobs: party branches are finalising the lists from which public representatives will be deployed.
“List fever” has galvanised most MPs. They dash from Parliament to help by-election canvassing, they prepare for ministerial visits in their areas, they ask those appearing before a parliamentary committee to make available documentation “for constituencies”. And speakers in recent parliamentary debates have made copious use of phrases such as “as our president says”, “the tide has turned” and “the ANC-led government is pushing back the frontiers of poverty”.
But it is the smaller parties that are really being stretched by the unofficial electioneering. The seven MPs of the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) have to cover the whole country.
“It’s definitely no holiday. It’s work, work, work; go, go, go, all the way,” says ACDP MP Steven Swart, who last year spent more than 100 days away from his Cape Town home. But he adds that the “servant leadership” style of the party appears to be paying off: more people know about it.
The sole National Action (NA) MP, Cassie Aucamp, is off to meet “Afrikaner people in London” to raise some funds before concentrating on electioneering at home. “If you are the only one [in the party] then there’s no rest!”
ANC MP Mluleki George insists hard work is nothing new. “Only those who are not used to it will collapse,” he said, adding that a number of police stations can expect a visit from him in his capacity as chairperson of the parliamentary safety and security committee.
New National Party MPs are busy rebuilding their party’s structures — still not quite up and running since the party left the Democratic Alliance almost two years ago. It’s also crunch time for some DA MPs. By mid-October they must say if they are available to serve another term.
After 22 years, Ken Andrew is bowing out. Stalwart Colin Eglin is expected to continue for another five-year stint. Others like Mike Waters are clocking up the kilometres in voter-registration campaigns and other work. Over the next five weeks, Waters will visit sexual offences courts and the police’s child protection units countrywide.
Inkatha Freedom Party MP Sue Vos will spend the next five weeks between Cape Town, Ulundi and Durban as she attends the IFP Women’s Brigade conference and gets on with election preparations.