Remember ”Heineken — the beer that refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach”? It was a great marketing slogan. But now, if you search the Heineken website, it is conspicuous by its absence. Advertising and marketing strategists like to move on; staleness is to be avoided at all costs, which is why it is a bit surprising that ”A Better Life for All” remains the African National Congress’s election campaign slogan.
Whether intentional or not, it marks the fact that what the ANC’s manifesto is essentially offering is more of the same. And why not? A commanding lead in the polls and not a viable challenger in sight — at least not nationally. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Prior to the 1994 election United States pollster Stan Greenberg advised the ANC that, because it was going to win with a landslide, all it needed to do in political marketing terms was to reassure the voters — both its core constituency and the insecure, non-ANC minorities.
Indeed, ”A Better Life for All” is a classic example of positive campaigning. It says, ”Don’t worry, its going to be fine; we’re going to look after everyone.” It captured the Mandelian mood of reconciliation, implies a material improvement in the living conditions of the majority but is careful not to promise a more explicit transformation of socio-economic power.
In a sense, nothing has changed. The ANC is going to win emphatically once again. So why not apply the same strategy? But there are dangers. The one glimmer of hope for the opposition parties is that opinion polls have persistently suggested that the policy areas in which people think the government is doing least well coincide closely with the most important problems they say they face.
In other words, a lot of voters think that the government is failing to meet their needs where it matters most — on jobs, crime/human security, poverty and, to a lesser extent, health (especially HIV/Aids).
On each, excepting crime, the figures have risen steadily since 1994, across all social groups. The ANC is not oblivious to these trends, and its campaign subtitle — ”A people’s covenant to create work [not jobs, note, but work] and fight poverty” — reflects this. Nonetheless, more of the same may not be such a compelling core message.
The second danger concerns turn-out. In 1994 this was not an issue. A gentle, positive message was more than sufficient. But this time turn-out is a very serious issue. The fact that the ANC has shot from the starting gates so early with its manifesto launch is not just about its greater organisational capacity. Its key election strategists are worried about getting its core voters to register and then vote. As much as 40% of the electorate may be apathetic to this election. If so, it may well hit the ANC proportionately harder than the other parties.
Again, in this context, offering more of the same is hardly the most stimulating message to entice people to vote.
The third danger derives from the inevitable tension between the imperatives of a national campaign and those of a provincial campaign. Two important provinces, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape, remain ”marginals”, requiring a different approach. In 1994, for example, the national strategy was perfectly conceived and executed, but the positive campaigning was blown out of the water by the brutal negative campaigning of the National Party in the Western Cape. Comics distributed to working class coloured voters, depicting 14-year-old African kids wielding AK-47s and preventing coloured families from attending church, with the words ”There is no God now we Communists are in charge” worked a treat. Promising a better life for all is no antidote to such campaigning. In election strategy, the only way to combat negative campaigning is by matching it.
Of course this time the New National Party can hardly serve up such a negative line when it is now in partnership with the ANC. And the Democratic Alliance, whose ”Fight Back” slogan in the 2000 local government elections drove it into a political cul-de-sac, appears less rather than more inclined to fight a negative campaign this time round. Correctly, it has come to realise that winning ANC votes can not be done by attacking the ANC explicitly. Residual loyalty is deep-rooted. Instead, talking about people’s problems, getting them on to the policy ground where the ruling party is most vulnerable and thereby indirectly criticising the ANC is not only a more subtle but a more effective way of shifting allegiances.
This will potentially make for a more nuanced campaign, but not necessarily a more exciting one. Negative campaigning is so much more entertaining as well as inventive. That ”Fight Back” and ”A Better Life for All” are the most memorable electoral slogans of democratic South Africa is a pathetic return given the depth of the creative well of talent that exists in this country. This lack of inventiveness may be due to a lack of imagination among the leaders as well as a paucity of political strategists. If the Saatchi brothers, who helped bring Margaret Thatcher to power in Britain in 1979 with the brilliant yet simple slogan ”Labour isn’t working” accompanied by a photo of a dole queue, were here I know what they would come up with. A photo of Thabo Mbeki with his infamous quote, ”I don’t know anyone who has died of Aids” accompanied by an electronic counter recording HIV infections. But is South Africa ready for such bold election campaigning, or just more of the same?