By Phakamisa Mayaba
HELEN ZILLE — the DA’s mayoral candidate for the City of Johannesburg — is winding down an innovative election campaign. On the best of days, Zille is ruthless, prone to lunging for the jugular in debates with her opponents, and quick to put down journalists who ask tough questions in their place. She is vicious, both verbally and in writing – an old-school liberal with subliminal old-guard conservative proclivities.
As a result, she is the last person you’d expect to put together a fresh, dynamic cross-cultural campaign that hopes to go beyond the walls of Constantia.
This has been her party’s Achilles’ Heel – its inability to convince the non-white masses that it is colour-blind and has everyone’s best interests at heart. Besides the messaging of governance that works – an increasingly convincing spiel, in the face of crumbling infrastructure and urban decay which is often associated with ANC misrule – how else could Zille try to win the invaluable ‘black vote’?
Clearly, tried and tested would not cut it this time. Kissing babies and dishing out blankets to the elderly is effective, but also out of date. And the voting fodder is now mostly made up of young black adults. They are the social media generation. They roll their eyes to the ceiling when the usual party hacks knock on their doors, handing out t-shirts and promising food parcels. They yawn at the tap that’s just been installed. Washed up speeches about promises to jobs are an insult. Gaslight them at your peril. More to the poinht are data, funding, and a leg up for entrepreneurial pursuits, because what they want most is to ‘make the bag’ – in layman’s terms, to start earning lots of money.
To them, visuals are the new currency – the in-your-face, bite-size reels that keep billions of eyes glued to Facebook and TikTok. Long-winded speeches will hardly retain their attention for long enough to remember you come voting day. Neither will your struggle-era dirges. You need to do better – maybe something interesting enough for them to shoot a video for the socials.
Perhaps this is what the local government elections campaigns should’ve focused on – the sort of canvassing that has the young, disillusioned voter in mind. Energetic, trendy, and the kind that shies away from traditional formalities, populism, and the sorts of things that leave one thinking: ‘Isn’t this exactly what they were saying and doing five years ago?’
In the last general election, millions of them – even those who had registered — stayed away. So any campaign is more or less wasted if it isn’t tailored to appeal to these personalities.
Perhaps the most reliable yardstick of the efficacy of the various campaigns thus far would be the results of the opinion polls. According to the most recent eNCA MarkData survey, the DA has widened the gap between it and the ANC in the City of Gold. Placing the DA at a comfortable 35% to the ANC’s 21.8%, the party appears to be a firm favourite. As mayoral candidate, Zille commands 30.6% of the popularity stakes, with ActionSA’s Herman Mashaba’s second at 23.4%.
From an ANC list of hopefuls, Dada Morero came in highest at 15%. Then came the MK Party (12.5%), the EFF (11.9%), ActionSA (10.3%) and the Patriotic Alliance (3.7%), and a bunch of parties below one per cent. Although the DA will obviously be thrilled, analysts are quick to point out that it will still need to form some kind of coalition in order to run the city.
In Cape Town, a DA stronghold, pundits are cautioning that the party must ensure that all its supporters turn out on the day. At 52.6%, however, it enjoys a comfortable lead over the ANC at 23.6%. While the PA (led by maverick sports minister Gayton McKenzie) is supposed to be particularly attractive to coloured people, at a paltry 3.9% it limps behind even the EFF (6.5%). The PA may hope to make inroads in rural communities in the Western Cape, but in Cape Town, it seems surprisingly weak. Perhaps the biggest winner in this poll is current Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis, who at 55.4% seems lined for a second term as the city’s First Citizen.
Capetonians also seem happier with how the city is run compared to their counterparts in Johannesburg. Some 60.5% are happy with the running of the city, while only 29.2% of Joburgers feel the same way. An astounding 88% of Joburgers ‘believe foreigners and xenophobia to be a problem in their city, and roughly two thirds are angry at the current ANC-led coalition government about water provision and infrastructure maintenance’.
Whether these polls truly reflect people’s grievances, or reflect something else entirely, we do not know. However, some congratulations should go to Helen Zille. At 75, the candidate they call Gogo (grandma) has managed to pull off a pretty impressive campaign.
Since she kicked it off, swimming in potholes and popping up in random watering holes, the spectacle has only gotten more vibrant and on point. Take, for instance, her entrance to her party’s final campaign rally this past weekend on a Gusheshe (a BMW 325is), with Cassper Nyovest’s eponymous hit song playing in the background, and accompanied by ‘Mr X,’ the bluff, no-nonsense television personality from Moja Love’s X-Repo, and you realise that she listened to the brief and has run with it pretty effectively.
Whether this has swayed more voters, we can’t say. But what we do know for sure is that, come 4 November in Johannesburg, die poppe sal dans.
Featured image: Helen Zille at her party’s final campaign rally in Johannesburg. Source: DA.