Setting out from Potchefstroom for Midrand in the early morning, Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Mulder is armed with just his iPod and a GPS called TomTom. There’s no bodyguard, driver or personal assistant in his C200 Mercedes.
That’s what it means to be the leader of a tiny, impoverished party that got 0.89% of the vote in 2004.
We meet Mulder at his first appointment — an interview on Jacaranda FM with TV shock jock Darren Scott. He looks out of place in his blue suit and black shoes among the T-shirt-clad radio people. But the studio crew clap for him.
Scott is impressed with how comfortable Mulder seems. ”He sits down and puts his earphones on, like a pro,” he tells listeners.
Mulder points out that he has a doctorate in communications and lectured in the subject at the Potchefstroomse Universiteit vir Christelike Hoër Onderwys.
”Why should people vote for you?” Scott shoots back. ”Your party’s so small; you don’t have any power.”
”The real process happens behind the doors. We go to the ministers and the president and we do lobbying.”
”But you have no effect whatsoever,” Scott retorts.
”Our goal is to get the ANC under 66% because that will make it less aggressive and arrogant,” Mulder says.
He’s convinced this can be done.
”Apartheid is the cement that holds the ANC together and the struggle history is wearing off. If every opposition party focuses on its niche and they get together at the end, it can break that arrogance.”
But isn’t apartheid the cement that holds his party together? The Freedom Front Plus emerged in 1994 under the leadership of General Constand Viljoen, pledging to protect Afrikaaner interests.
The post-millennium version is ”protecting Christian values and minority rights”, but the FF+ still wants a volkstaat for Afrikaans-speaking Christians.
Mulder’s charm works on the Jacaranda girls — everyone wants to be photographed with him.
It’s time for brunch and Mulder suggests the Wimpy close to the facebrick office park that houses the FF+ offices in Centurion.
”We bought the building recently as an investment,” he tells us proudly. The top floor is rented out, but Mulder says that when the party grows, it might need to reclaim the space.
At the Wimpy everyone looks up when their most famous local resident walks in. He chooses a booth in the corner, where nothing but his constantly ringing cellphone can disturb us.
He answers politely, like a man who needs every vote he can get: ”I’m busy with a journalist right now but let me see how I can help you.”
His experience on the hustings has been mostly positive, he says over a lime milkshake and a greasy fry-up. ”I get the impression people want to vote this time. There won’t be such a big stayaway vote.”
But this might be bad for his party, he says. ”The increase in voters will mean we need more votes to get one person into Parliament.” He also complains about government funding, which gives bigger parties more money — ”haves get more and the have-nots get less”.
Mulder admits this election campaign is more focused on media than face-to-face meetings with voters.
”It’s also a safety issue. People on farms don’t want to go out at night to attend meetings.”
His political experience shows in the ease with which he juggles phone calls, well-wishers, a journalist and a photographer.
Back at the office Mulder does a quick soundbite for an Afrikaans radio programme, Monitor. We wait in the boardroom, which sports a Vierkleur on the wall, and drink more coffee that is prepared by his young, blond assistant, James Kemp.
The party’s grey-haired communications chief, Colonel Piet Uys, briefs him with military precision on his next appointment. ”You leave here at 11h40. When you get there you’ll be met by the students. At 12h15 they’ll take you to the Aula [Pretoria University auditorium]. Before that you’ll spend 10 minutes in the waiting room.”
The FF+ controls the university SRC and the event kicks off with a video prepared by the party’s campus branch showing mostly poor whites, ”die vergete Afrikaners” [”the forgotten Afrikaners”], with a whiny Laura Branigan soundtrack.
The 12 security guards posted in the hall have nothing to fear. The 500 students sit quietly among a few banners — one saying forlornly ”Jou pa soek jou” [”Your dad is looking for you”].
Mulder said what he thought the mostly white crowd wanted to hear: affirmative action laws must be changed and the death penalty is a way to deal with crime. But 15 minutes on they start leaving, trickling out.
I follow one outside — a black Âsecond-year psychology student, who tells me: ”I wanted to see whether he’s as bad as the pamphlets suggest. But he’s worse. I couldn’t follow him because he spoke mostly Afrikaans. He was only attacking other parties and not illuminating what his party stands for.”