The day after the 1999 national election the SABC suddenly went big on the news that the African National Congress had won two-thirds of the vote and would now be able to amend the Constitution unilaterally, should it choose to do so.
Presumably taking the view that they were entitled to rely on the professional excellence of the public broadcaster, minion radio station after minion radio station repeated the news and it spread like wildfire: the ANC has two-thirds! This was a flabbergasting schoolboy error. The counting was far from complete. It was just that the ANC’s total of votes counted so far had touched the two-thirds point — a completely different thing altogether. Later, when the counting was complete, the ANC, in fact, fell short of the two-thirds mark.
Even if elementary levels of analytical competence have now been acquired in the SABC and elsewhere, there is a fundamental difficulty in reading and interpreting election results in a “pure” system of proportional representation.
The way to make sense of the results phase is to first identify the issues that are important in terms of election outcome and then to find voting districts whose composition is pertinent. For example: if you think that the performance of coloured, working-class voters is crucial in determining not only who will govern in the Western Cape, but also the short- and long-term future of the New National Party, you need to find a group of voting districts where the voters’ roll is largely constituted of coloured, working-class people and look out for when their results are declared.
Because of the effectiveness of apartheid spatial development strategy and the fact that those apartheid boundaries have largely remained in place since 1994, this is a relatively easy task although, unfortunately, the voting districts have changed since the 1999 election, so comparison will be more precarious.
This is a more sophisticated approach, but hardly rocket science. So why does no one do it? One way of analysing elections is to think of them in four phases. First, there are the campaign issues: what do people care about? Second, there is the response of the contesting parties: what campaign strategy do they employ? Third, there are the results. And fourth, political consequences.
There is general consensus about the first: unemployment and human security (crime, if you must call it that), including HIV/Aids, predominate. For any political party, the basic construction of the campaign involves being clear about what your message is and your brand identity, isolating your “market”, and then taking your message to that market — communication in other words. Oh, and raising the money to do so!
The key factor for success is to ensure that the message is what the voter wants to hear and that you can credibly offer it. Most political parties in South Africa suffer from the same fundamental problem. And it’s not a shortage of money: there are plenty of ways of communicating effectively without printing millions of lamp-post posters or taking out full-page ads in national newspapers; radio adverts are extremely good value — not only do they reach deeper into the electoral market, and with high numbers, but you can “repeat message” by running short spots repeatedly. This is a communication strategy the Democratic Alliance is evidently placing greater emphasis on in this campaign.
The problem is that there is very little strategic capacity — expertise and experience — to run election campaigns in this country, and most of what there is has been captured by an oligarchy of two: the ANC and the DA. Most of the other smaller parties have to make it up as they go along.
So what are the key election outcome issues? First of all, turnout. Not overall so much — natural historical gravity dictates that the stratospheric heights of 1994 and 1999 cannot be maintained — as between social groups. In particular, given the rich data that is now available about socio-economic inequality and its apparently chronic condition, it will be important to see if turnout is higher in middle-class areas than in working-class and poor areas.
If so, it will support the hypothesis that those who have gained the most from democracy are more likely to vote and, inversely, those who have not are more likely to drop out from politics by not voting — whether prompted by the boycott call of the Social Movements Indaba or by the demoralising horror of their own continued poverty.
Second, given that the ANC’s traditional mass support has come from working-class and poor voters, will any fall in turnout from these social groups impact negatively on the ANC’s overall proportion of the vote and especially its prospects of winning a majority in the Western Cape? I think it might.
The ANC’s communication campaign has not impressed. Selling the policy thinking and solid achievements described in the government’s review of the first 10 years should not be beyond a major advertising agency such as Ogilvy & Mather, yet it appears that it may be.
The imagery of the most recent print media ads has a certain elegance, but it is surprising that the copy that accompanies the “Build Safer Communities” advert promises a further 150 000 police — the very number that the DA has been proclaiming as its own election pledge for far longer. As for “Create Work” — the latest poster slogan — it is unclear whether this is anything other than an exhortation. At least it did not put a photo of a black man against a black background, as the Inkatha Freedom Party’s agency did.
Instead, the ANC’s campaign success will depend far more on its leaders’ direct communication with voters and on whether it is has the organisational strength to get its vote out on the day, notwithstanding complications due to Election Day being so close to Easter.
The third key outcome is the performance of the opposition. Will the gradual fragmentation of recent years be further encouraged by the electorate or will anti-ANC voters respond to the campaign strategy of the DA and its claim that a vote for anyone else is a “wasted vote”? Analysis must dig deeper than the obvious immediate questions: Will the DA retrieve the lost ground of the “wasted years” of its merger with the NNP and match the level of support it achieved in the 2000 municipal election? Have the Independent Democrats been able to establish a big enough platform for growth in the future? And, having achieved just such a foothold in 1999, has Bantu Holomisa’s United Democratic Movement been able to realise some of its potential?
Instead, analysts must examine whether the DA has made the inroad into the black voting market as its ambition demands. The party’s campaign team has some very specific objectives in this regard and, thanks to its relatively sophisticated tracking capacity, will be able to indulge in some interesting self-reflection once the results from its carefully selected target market come in.
Fourth and fifth, the two “marginals” — KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape — and the voting choices of the only two real “swing” constituencies of an otherwise fairly stolid market: the Indian and middle-class liberal vote in KwaZulu-Natal, and coloured working-class voters in the Cape. Both will impact directly on the immediate and longer-term fortunes of the IFP and the NNP and on the composition and, therefore, the character of both national government — can Mangosuthu Buthelezi be replaced in the Cabinet, perhaps by Marthinus van Schalkwyk? — and the two provincial governments.
While the IFP may continue to hold its own, reinforced by its tactical but not necessarily long-term alliance with the DA, the NNP’s steady slide into oblivion is unlikely to be seriously delayed on April 14; coping with the communication demands of its relationship with the ANC was always likely to be beyond it. That their respective coalitions will keep them both in provincial office will not disguise the deeper, longer-term trends.
These uncertainties of these “big five” suggest that although one might think it would be the other way around, the results promise to be interesting in spite of, rather than because of, a largely unimaginative and uninspiring campaign.