”Campaigning for South Africa’s general elections, to be held next month, has moved into top gear — with politicians scrambling for an endorsement from the country’s 20,7-million registered voters.
”The parties are now in full-swing campaign mood,” says Khabele Matlosa of the Johannesburg-based Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (Eisa).
Two of the country’s nine provinces are the site of especially heated electioneering.
”The major parties seem to have set their eyes on KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape,” notes Matlosa, adding: ”In the rest of the places, I think it will just be ceremonies, nothing much.”
The regions in question are the only two provinces that have remained in opposition hands since the demise of apartheid in 1994. Now the ruling African National Congress has them firmly locked in its sights.
To date, Kwazulu-Natal has remained an Inkatha Freedom Party stronghold. This province was also the most tense during the run-up to the 1994 poll, according to Eisa, with free canvassing an impossibility.
Human Rights Watch says that more than 400 people were killed in political violence during the final weeks before the 1994 election — mostly in clashes between ANC and IFP supporters. Hundreds of others also lost their lives during political violence in 1994.
By the 1999 poll, the IFP had attempted to transform its image from that of a Zulu nationalist and traditionalist party to one promoting pluralism and freedom. This process suffered a setback recently, however.
Last week senior ANC official Pallo Jordan accused the IFP of perpetuating violence in Kwazulu-Natal after a number of people died.
”I’ve seen violence from one side. I’m not trying to blame the other party — but I think we need zero tolerance as far as violence is concerned,” he told a briefing by political parties organised by the Foreign Correspondents’ Association in Johannesburg on March 1.
The IFP’s Musa Zondi said Jordan had been misinformed by the media.
”As a resident of KwaZulu-Natal, I’ve discovered that the media always whips up the hype. In fact, the six people who died in Kwazulu-Natal later turned out to be drunkards and drug addicts. There are not known by both parties [the IFP and ANC],” he noted.
Zondi told reporters that the IFP was committed to a code of electoral conduct signed by most of South Africa’s political parties.
Voting patterns in the April 14 elections are not expected to differ greatly from those seen in the previous polls, when the ANC triumphed convincingly.
According to Eisa, the ruling party enjoys the support of about two-thirds of the electorate, with rural blacks being particularly committed to the ANC. To date, opinion polls bear out these expectations.
”We want to get a thundering big majority. Politics are about winning. We will get at least a two-thirds majority,” Jordan said.
Nonetheless, even ruling-party politicians will have some tough questions to ask in the run-up to voting — particularly about the widespread poverty that continues to plague South Africa.
President Thabo Mbeki and ANC officials came face-to-face with this problem as they campaigned house-to-house in the Gauteng and Mpumulanga provinces this weekend.
At one of the houses, Mbeki listened to a family whose electricity and water were disconnected because they could not afford to pay for the services.
According to a report issued on March 7 by the United States Agency for International Development, nearly 60% of black South Africans live in poverty, compared to 3% of whites. Similar disparities are found as far as skills, education, health care and housing are concerned.
Finance Minister Trevor Manuel told Parliament in February, when delivering his Budget speech, that the government had made concerted efforts to redress poverty and inequality through public spending on social and economic programmes. The money spent on social services has grown from 44,4% of general government expenditure in 1982/83 to 56,7% in 2002/03.
”Most of our spending, particularly in social services, is targeted towards poor and vulnerable groups as a basis for broadening economic prosperity through building human capabilities,” Manuel said.
He told Parliament that the government had built 1,6-million houses for the poor, 700 new primary health clinics and extended potable water supplies to about nine million people. Sanitation facilities had been provided for 6,4-million people.
”But we recognise that vulnerability remains deep-rooted, exacerbated by rising unemployment and the long shadows cast by the social dislocation and exclusion of the past,” Manuel noted.
Another area of concern is voter apathy.
”Registering voters is one thing. But encouraging them to vote is another task,” Khabele says.
”There has been a lot of anxiety and apathy about the youth in South Africa not registering to vote,” adds Wole Olaleye, also of Eisa.
”The Independent Electoral Commission managed to capture only 15% of the young people,” he said, blaming this lacklustre performance on insufficient voter education.
But, commission spokesperson Victor Mukine says the fact that voter registration has increased from 34% of the electorate to 43% between 1999 and 2004 proves otherwise.
”This is a result of voter education,” he said.
A total of 142 political parties have registered in South Africa. According to the commission, only 37 will contest the 2004 elections. — IPS