Of all the political parties contesting the elections none has been hunting votes — from both the ruling African National Congress and from other opposition parties — as aggressively as the Democratic Alliance.
Despite this, the party insists it has a positive campaign message: “South Africa Deserves Better”. And, every single pronouncement, every movement that party leader Tony Leon makes, has all been part of its strategy, which is backed by a sophisticated election machine that fine-tunes its message on a daily basis.
The DA is tracking voting patterns for the various political parties —every day — and the party responds to what the figures tell it.
DA strategy adviser Ryan Coetzee, a quietly confident man with a deceptively casual appearance, has tracked the party campaign. He believes it is all working out well and that the party is on course to double its votes from the last election.
Leon has announced that — with the Inkatha Freedom Party — the party hopes to secure 30% of the national vote and force its way into the KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape provincial governments.
While the party is working very hard to win every vote, Coetzee says that DA support in the election will depend on a number of variables. For example, if DA supporters turn out in large numbers — as they did at the last election — the party will do better than it did in the last poll. The party’s performance will also be decided by the extent to which the DA can sway “undecided voters” into its camp and how many more black votes it can attract.
Coetzee says it is difficult to track the trends among black voters because they are not easy to sample, especially by telephone. But the party is aiming only to double the 2,6% black vote it received during the local government elections in 2000.
While 4% or 5% of the black vote does not sound like a lot, it is comparatively big, he said.
“Look, more black South Africans will vote for us than for the PAC or Azapo. Why are these parties unable to win more black support than us? It is because we are a national organisation with a competent leadership and we have the capacity to raise funds when we need to.”
Coetzee said he was uncomfortable with the belief that the black vote was a monolithic one.
“There is a black market that does not think we are racist. But they want to know if we can identify with them so that they can identify with us.”
The ANC is ahead of everyone else, he said, because it is regarded as the liberation movement — but that will soon change.
“It takes time to build credibility. The ANC is running a defensive campaign that says at every opportunity the DA is racist. It cannot get any worse.”
Commenting on the DA’s much-maligned election slogan, “South Africa deserves better”, Coetzee says the feedback the party has received is that the message expresses a need for change and is patriotic, as well as being a comment on the ANC, saying it had failed.
Coetzee admits readily to using what he calls the “squeeze campaign” — pressuring the party’s smaller opposition adversaries. He says he is intrigued by how everyone ignored the DA’s attacks on the New National Party, Freedom Front Plus and the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) but were quick to react to its criticism of the Independents Democrats’ Patricia de Lille.
“Each party has hard support [loyal voters] and soft support. We target that soft support to win it over. Our research has shown that it works.
“There is a general bias, especially from media, towards De Lille because when we ran ads against the ACDP, Nats and all the others, no one complained. But De Lille will be beaten by the ACDP and maybe the Nats, she will get 1,1% of the vote.”
Coetzee said the overall party strategy is to establish itself as the alternative government. Between 1994 and 1999 the strategy had been to build itself as the main op- position, and with that achieved, this year’s elections will mark a move towards consolidating the alternative government.
The party this week said it has launched 3 500 radio adverts, in every major South African language, erected over 375 000 posters across the country, canvassed over half a million people directly and handed out 8,7-million pamphlets.