In the run-up to the election, Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini is making news — because of his decision to acquire another child bride.
So very different from the gory days before the 1994 election when his name was invoked by the Inkatha Freedom Party to give credibility to its threat that it would raise an army in KwaZulu-Natal if it was not granted concessions during the political negations that led to the end of apartheid.
How quickly things have changed as democracy has taken root.
In a radical departure from the politics of the past century, this week the IFP called on its members to boycott payment of TV licences to underscore the fact that it is less than happy with the TV mileage its leaders are getting from the public broadcaster.
”KwaZulu-Natal is ruled by the IFP, its premier is an IFP member — but we do not receive coverage from the broadcaster, which always runs after President Thabo Mbeki and his deputy Jacob Zuma,” complained IFP chairperson Ephraim Zwane.
In 1994, in the days before the election, a place to vote for the IFP was still being stuck by hand on to the ballot papers as the party had refused to commit to the elections until the last minute. Some ballot papers were flown and ferried to voting stations after the polls had opened because of logistical and other problems.
This time there is another election battle on the cards — the placards, that is. In March the Democratic Alliance accused Corne Mulder, the brother of Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Mulder, of stealing DA posters. Mulder said he was a senior politician and ”not stupid enough” to steal posters.
Having resigned itself to the fact that there were indeed idiots happy to steal rival party posters, the DA announced that it had hired an agency to monitor DA posters on lamp-posts around Pretoria. No news regarding similar pilferage has been heard since Big Brother started keeping watch.
The ANC and IFP have construed the defacing of their posters in DA-controlled wards as a sign that the champions of liberalism have created no-go areas in some Durban suburbs.
Patricia de Lille complained to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) that the DA had defamed her by calling her Independent Democrats a one-woman party. Support for De Lille came from across the political spectrum, with the DA being ridiculed for having too short a memory to remember that Helen Suzman, the stalwart of its forerunner the Progressive Federal Party, was for 14 years the sole voice of liberalism in Parliament. This is one of the paltry 10 or so complaints the IEC had received since the election date was announced.
If the police are keeping statistics about the types of crime committed in relation to the elections they are not telling. Instead, they have chosen to release them next year.
South African Police Service spokesperson Superintendent Charmaine Muller said: ”I am not allowed to say how many people have been arrested or to give any information regarding those incidents.”
This has led to the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (Eisa) declaring the election campaign ”mundane”.
Eisa’s research director, Dr Khabele Matlosa, said the Electoral Court so far had not sat to hear any cases involving electoral disputes, and this shows that South Africa’s democracy has matured.
”The complaints have been quite mundane compared with … 1994 and 1999. Unlike in those elections, the nature of conflict [in this year’s elections] is low and not too serious. It also does not involve violent conflict except in certain areas in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal,” said Matlosa, whose organisation assists the IEC to monitor election-related conduct.
Matlosa said the ID’s complaint related to the code of conduct all parties had signed in terms of which they agreed to ”level the playing fields and ensure that parties treat each other with respect”.