ANC'S SLEEK CAMPAIGN

SUNDAY TIMES
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
By Mondli Makhanya
Apr 04, 2009

Suddenly brain-dead kwaito musicians and soap stars were rubbing shoulders with politicians, being treated like VIPs

They arrive in 4X4s and an assortment of luxury sedans. In the convoy are senior leaders of the ruling party, with an array of activists and hangers-on tagging along.

They pull up at the car wash and pour out of the cars. Music blares from the sound system, attracting the attention of the neighbourhood.

Soon the booze is flowing. Meat is ordered from nearby butcheries and shisanyamas.

The music and the wafting meat smell draws the crowds. Before you know it an impromptu bash is under way.

While the locals chew on the flesh and gulp down Queen Victoria’s tears, party activists pounce on them with the gospel according to Luthuli House.

By sunset the party is still pumping. The leaders and their hangers-on jump into their vehicles, leaving the car washers with a handsome way-up-above-market-rate payment. Oh, and they leave plenty of supplies behind for the locals to continue the session.

The convoy speeds off into the distance and the locals are left with the distinct message: “Kumnandi kwa ANC/ Ho monate ho ANC (It’s really funky in the ANC).

Welcome to election campaign 2009, South Africa’s most exciting election yet. It is a campaign that has seen the ANC roll back from its shell-shocked state of disarray and turn itself into a formidable fighting machine.

Throughout 2008, the ANC was in turmoil. Brawls were breaking out at branch meetings. Party leaders were at each other’s throats and singing from different hymn sheets.

Certainly not the state any party wants to be in on the eve of elections.

Enter the Congress of the People, born out of a national convention held in Sandton in October last year.

The fizz and excitement around the convention startled the ANC’s senior leaders. Obamamania was gripping the planet and the convention, with its message of change and renewal, seemed to touch a chord. Publicly the ANC leadership derided the new party as embittered non-starters but privately they were panicking.

The ANC, which functions best when it has a discernible enemy, now had been given a gift. Party structures were galvanised to fight this new enemy. Even the Democratic Alliance and other opposition parties had some respite from attacks.

More importantly, this new enemy enabled the ANC to unite. It forced the party to kick-start its election campaign a lot earlier than it had envisaged.

So in November, long before an election date was announced, the party was plastering the country with posters and sending battalions on door-to-door campaigns.

By the time 2008 became 2009, the ANC had rediscovered its confidence. Whereas party strategists had seen their not so-nice smelling president Jacob Zuma as a liability, they worked tirelessly to turn him into an asset.

Even the repulsive Julius Malema, who many had wanted to hide in some shed until the elections were over, was turned into a vote-catcher and unleashed on the nation with his bluster and buffoonery.

And for some reason the people just loved it. Notoriety was good. This was the time of the anti-hero.

But the magic in the ANC’s campaign was that it managed to undercut the new kid on the block’s appeal to the urban youth and middle classes.

Whereas Coping was the cool and sophisticated thing to do at the close of 2008, the ANC deftly changed this in the early months of 2009.

It roped celebrities into its campaign machinery. Suddenly brain-dead kwaito musicians and soap stars were rubbing shoulders with powerful politicians, being treated like VIPs at the opening of parliament and gracing glitzy political functions. In return they spread the word that the ANC is the place to be.

Next, the ANC turned to professional and business organisations. Angered by Mosiuoa Lekota’s regressive comments on employment equity, the professional associations found a more comforting message coming from the ANC. They, too, fanned out into suburbia, telling the middle classes to stay put in the ANC.

All the while the cash-flush ANC was throwing massive parties in the suburbs, car-wash and tavern bashes in the townships and distributing food parcels to the desperately poor.

They reached into communities of influence — chambers of commerce, ethnic minority clubs.

A lethargic COPE, still wrangling over leadership issues and facing financial constraints, was battling to get its campaign out of the starting blocks.

The momentum of the Sandton convention had long been lost. By the time the party woke up and began campaigning aggressively, the ANC had run off with a huge chunk of the cheese. Even the DA, the United Democratic Movement and that feudal regional outfit in KwaZulu-Natal seemed to have had their house in order a lot earlier.

Though the new party will still have a decent showing (polls put it at between 8% and 16%) it will long rue its inertia.

So when the ANC celebrates a convincing victory on April 23 and delivers us Jacob Zuma as head of state, it will be thanks to a slick campaign second to none.

A campaign that was able to put angel wings and the scent of daffodils on a man so deeply flawed.