It was the prospect of power sharing between barely reconciled ideological and moral enemies that confounded the people. (Photo Louise Gubb/CORBIS SABA/Corbis via Getty Images)
On one side is the Father of the Nation: regal, statesman-like and almost saintly. The problem is, though, that he talks at the measured and pedantic pace of a provincial schoolmaster, and is stiff and uncomfortable on television. On the other side is a sharp and incisive debater, well-honed by decades of parliamentary experience. The problem is, though, that his opponent carries the aura of sanctitude and that his own newly acquired good-ol’-boy affability does not always ring quite true.
Next Thursday’s presidential debate between Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk will be the country’s first full-throttle sally into American-style television campaigning. The debate might not decide the future of the country, but at the very least will offer viewers critical new insights into both the psychology and the media savvy of our two senior statesmen.
American elections in the West, we know. are won and lost on television. The stories are legend: how a down-home Bill Clinton won the much-disputed turf of Middle America by showing his opponent, George Bush, to be a stiff and nasal East Coast patrician; how a sweaty and ill-prepared Richard Nixon saw a reversal of fortunes that lost him a hairs-breadth election in 1960 when pitted against a smooth, telegenic John F Kennedy. “Would you buy a used car from this man?” That was the slogan the Democrats printed under a photo of a glowering “Tricky Dickie” taken from the 1960 debates. And that is the question all American candidates are now forced to consider when they remake themselves before the camera.
But do we in South Africa want a used-car salesman – trustworthy or otherwise – to lead us? Do we want a good ol’ boy, a brother from the ghetto or an oompie from the farm? Or do we want a father, a patriarch, someone who’ll tell us what to do? On the record, the handlers of both De Klerk and Mandela insist they are not “handlers” at all; that both leaders make their own decisions and are adamant they will “be themselves”, TV or no TV.
Off the record. though, both the ANC and the NP are spending fortunes on media research, trying to ascertain what image best suits their respective target constituencies. Both sides acknowledge that De Klerk is the better debater and that he is more comfortable with television. Lucie Page of the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism, who has conducted “How to Handle the Media” workshops for some ANC and Congress of South African Trade Unions candidates, says: ”We always come back to De Klerk as an example of how to use television to one’s advantage. He has mastered the medium.”
There’s a whole new language afloat. De Klerk is particularly good at “bridging” – taking the interviewer’s question, appearing to answer it. and then skilfully shifting to the points he wishes to make. In last week’s debate between Pik Botha and Thabo Mbeki, Botha did this all the time, even if it was a bit crude and sophistic at times. Mbeki did not do it at all.
De Klerk is also good at “grabbing” – catching the viewers’ attention with sharp and concise soundbites – and he is getting better at “thawing”, another mediaspeak neologism. According to Page, this means “talking from the heart rather than from the head; making personal connections with viewers in their living rooms”. Mandela undoubtedly has his authoritative statesmanship going for him – what Sunday Times editor Ken Owen has called his “Studebak-er-era civility” – and he is, according to Page, “a natural. But he could exploit his potential to the fullest with a little bit more training.”
A source in the NP media team puts it more strongly: “What we’ve got going for us is that Mandela is ugly on television. He is not succinct and he has a tendency to get irritable and even sulk if he doesn’t approve of a question.” But the source acknowledges that Mandela does “start from a position of strength: he is on the right side of history, and he has a saintly, almost Christ-like persona”. That makes De Klerk’s job more difficult, “for the state president has demonstrated before that he is not willing to knock Mandela on a public platform”. This, the ANC’s own media people say, is why they are not trying to squeeze affability out of Mandela’s often stone-like persona.
A source involved in preparing Mandela for the media says “the only work we need to do is to prepare him to formulate his answers in the allotted time space”. This source believes that there are important benefits to Mandela’s rigidity: “Certainly, if you do a textbook assessment of who is a better debater and who is good on TV, then Mandela does not win. He speaks slowly and takes a long time to formulate answers. “But. our research shows that this works to our advantage: it might not be classic TV style, but it accentuates the fact that he is thoughtful, considered and statesmanlike.”
Simply put: back-slapping, knife-jabbing politicking is not the appropriate cloth for a saint or king, or even a mere statesman. But others in the ANC acknowledge that they are cutting the coat to suit the cloth. “Let’s face it,” one says, “Mandela is never going to be a Bill Clinton. He does not speak from the heart easily. And he is not one to pretend to be speaking from the heart if he’s not feeling it. So we’re working with what we’ve got.” What they have, as well, is a personality that is intensely private and also sometimes autocratic: Mandela does not always follow his carefully prepared briefing papers, and he doesn’t always alert his “handlers” when he is about to digress. Many in the ANC are still smarting, for example, at his call for a 14-year-old vote.
“But that,” one ANC source says, attempting some damage control, “is the mark of a statesman. No one ever dared to tell Churchill or Ghandi what to say.” Speaking generally about ANC candidates’ media profiles, Page has picked up some other problems that need urgent attention —most importantly, “a tendency to use jargon out of the Reconstruction and Development Plan rather than translating it into short and punchy, accessible sentences. Candidates must always remember that the average audience member has a 12-year-old’s vocabulary” She also hears “so much cotton-wool” in ANC interviews. “International research has shown that people listen most carefully to the first 30 seconds.
So by the time the ANC guys have finished with their ‘what we are saying is’ or their ‘what we are meaning by this’ introductions, everyone has switched off.” She has noted an “astonishing change” after just one day of training in the candidates she has worked with, most notably in Cyril Ramaphosa: “He has a tendency to lack enthusiasm and to be long-winded.” But shortly alter his training, he was down in Natal, in Bambhayi, alter a massacre.
And when the SABC interviewed him on site, “I couldn’t get over the change. He was forceful and passionate, and yet he made all his points.” As with the ANC, the NP has also done much in “retraining” its candidates to make the adjustment to the new political dispensation. And this goes further than simply putting De Klerk, from time to time, in an open-necked shirt.
NP spokesman Marthinus van Schalkwyk notes that “the media has taken it as a foregone conclusion that the ANC is the government in waiting and we are the underdogs. So we have been forced to take on the role of challenger.” This has meant that the NP’s candidates have had to learn “a new aggression. They cannot expect special treatment anymore. In our training we have emphasised that if you want to be heard you have to speak up and do it yourself.”
The NP’s approach has been to pack criticism of the ANC into those first critical 30 seconds; the ANC’s approach has been to ignore the NP – as if it were a troublesome mosquito – and focus on its own reconstruction policies. There is so much personal history between Mandela and De Klerk, however, that Thursday’s debate will be inure than simply a clash of strategies and styles. The constrictions of format notwithstanding. it could be a psychological drama telling us much about how they are going to rule the country ‘try together.