Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party. Or, in the variant, ‘the country.’
It’s a familiar typing drill sentence to people who, like me, were bashing away in touch-typing school sometime in the Seventies. I never used it in real life, and I doubt if any others did.
But it does seem rather appropriate to use it now as the hustings for the 2024 national elections begin in earnest.
A torrid 13-and-a-half weeks’ campaign, that will require nerves of steel for all of us, lies ahead.
The rhetoric has already risen to risible levels and outright lies.
Political gimmicks (defined as something not real or of serious value but designed simply to attract attention or publicity; also known in Afrikaans by the delightful word ‘foefies’) will appear thick and fast from here on. Panyaza Lesufi, for instance, supplied an early whopper of a gimmick when he promised Gauteng residents in his State of the Province speech that he’d buy 18 hospitals to solve our public health-care problems.
A legion of viral clips or fake AI engineered material will inevitably roll through social media riling up sections of the populace for the duration of the campaign period.
Soon there will be a rush to nab the best poles on which to legally, (and if you’re not too worried about obeying laws, illegally), string party placards. Party supporters in T-shirts will take to the streets to canvass.
A rash of new parties have joined the established prospects and registered for the contest. By mid-January there were 356 parties registered with the IEC. For the first time since our new democracy and Constitution, independent candidates, not associated with political parties, will contest these democratic elections. They’ll do so on a provincial basis, but their nomination is only possible now that the election date has been declared, so it will be some time before we know the individuals who have made it onto the long ballot papers.
Massive failure
There’s been a massive failure to realize how confusing this election is likely to be for voters, and the contestants. The newbies are going to find out just how tough politics really is, and how much organization is needed to fight in a national election.
The Electoral Reform law was only signed by President Cyril Ramaphosa last year, and the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has been scrabbling ever since to adjust, update and devise processes to take in this new development. That’s left little time for voter education, and more importantly, for the IEC itself to test its new systems. Registration days. however, were run like dress rehearsals for voting Wednesday and appear to have been quite smoothly handled.
In the spirit of ‘always look on the bright side of life’, I will point out that there are some positive things that precede elections in South Africa for the many who have been let down by all parts of government for the past three cycles. As many would have noticed, politicians in local, provincial and even national governments are suddenly motivated to ensure taps are delivered to communities. There is a marked, and in Johannesburg, remarkable, frenzy of road signage resuscitation, repairing of potholes and water pipes and installation of transformers currently going on.
Even before the unexpectedly early announcement of the date by President Cyril Ramaphosa (possibly brought forward after his deputy Paul Mashatile mumbled, was misheard, and then was reported as giving 24 May, a Friday, as the election date), would-be political representatives of the future had begun emerging from their signature collecting, consultations on policy, registration campaigns, and their many meetings with pollsters and munificent donors, to launch their manifestos before colourful crowds.
Just over 27.6 million voters (on the voters’ roll before the official declaration of the elections) are being invited to peruse manifestos and be swayed by the promises ringing out from podia. Eventually some of them may simply be offered money for nothing or chicken for free.
Over four decades
In my household, which has, for its sins, either been covering or working on every election for over four decades, it will be a busy and fretful time. We will be ‘reading the tea leaves’, as it were, in every piece of information we come across, analysing every move, utterance, event and looking for signs both propitious and depressing of what is to come. We will also wait expectantly, as a result of our experience in so many other previous elections, for the ‘race incident’ that will be fed into the media maw by the incumbent party on the eve of voting. It’s been the ‘old reliable’ signoff to the end of an ANC election campaign even before the party went on the back foot.
If you haven’t yet donned a party t-shirt, begun having persuasive conversations with your friends and volunteered to help on voting day, I’d like to offer some advice on how to steer through the hustings hullabaloo and make a rational voting choice that will bring the African National Congress well below the 51% needed to rule outright.
The self-harming rural grannies will no doubt still dutifully make their cross, as is their habit, for those they think are the only ones with the power to grant pensions.
Those who have fixated on a pet issue that no one has yet taken up because, frankly, it has no relevance to our really big problems such as unemployment (which rose to 32.1% from 31.9 % in the fourth quarter of 2023) can dangle in the wind as far as I’m concerned.
The ‘What’s the point?’, ‘all politicians are crooks’, crowd have hopefully dropped out of the game now by not registering at all.
But there are first-time voters and many others who have probably not yet decided who they will vote for.
It’s probable the ‘there’s no party that exactly suits me’ crowd may need a nudge towards a decision along these lines: You are not being asked to choose your best friend for life, the person you wish to marry, or the religion you will follow for the rest of your days. You are being asked to select representatives who you believe will best deliver something better than what we have and some of what the country needs in the next five years. If any help is needed in focusing on what that is, it’s economic growth, and the IRR has some useful pointers on this.
Should not become the norm
Always remember that if your chosen party or representative does nothing significant about delivering to citizens or does not keep its promises, you can vote for someone else in 2029. A 30-year continuous run by a single, dogmatic party should not become the norm.
A voting decision should be based not on race, or sex or language or class or income or what your parents did, or, I sincerely hope, someone’s looks or charisma or a ‘good speaking voice’, but what is most likely to improve prospects for the voter and most of the rest of the population.
Fear of demonisation, of breaking ranks, of the upheaval of change must be banished.
To get to that decision you need to be active. Homework in preparation for this important vote, particularly for first timers, should include a reading of manifestos and perhaps a refresher engagement with the Constitution that all must abide by.
Set out to acquire your information throughout this election run-up from the horse’s mouth; a primary source, wherever possible. Or you may be driven mad by the mob.
Visit the websites of the parties under consideration and follow them on social media or get a newsletter or information sent directly to you. Do the same for independents, researching their background and any social media history. Get onto the IEC website, which you have paid for as a taxpayer to keep up to date with all developments. Check out the political party lists.
You can probably do all this better than most journalists.
Sharpen critical analysis skills and widen your news and information input beyond the mainstream media, the Neighbourhood WhatsApp groups and other social media where many babble ignorantly, unwittingly disseminating myths and mischief.
Check out the OpenAI Sora tool. It could prove helpful to know what is possible if clever-stick techies on campaign teams get up to some very sophisticated tricks. Don’t rely on Google AI for now. It seems it has some major bias problems. Brush up on the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Scepticism
Always keep your scepticism dome up. There will be rubbish, frequently spoken or reported, swirling around this election.
I anticipate that the inherited tendency to Persistent Optimism on South Africa, a syndrome I call POSA, that has sustained me and my family for so many decades, despite setbacks, will be sorely strained and tested from now until the result of this coming supreme democratic exercise is announced.
I have no doubt that before that time, probably when provoked by a particularly foolish voter utterance, I may begin musings on whether a qualified franchise wouldn’t be much better than this willy-nilly scenario, where everyone gets to vote regardless of whether they have any education, property, a criminal record or ability to think rationally.
This has a whiff of Socrates’s ‘Ship of Fools’ critique of democracy. Which I admit is a bit too totalitarian and elitist for my taste. Plato’s own description of democracy as “a charming form of government full of variety and disorder and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike” while milder, doesn’t quite do it for me.
Perhaps it will be best to take the Winston Churchill view when it all becomes too fraught:
“Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms of government that have been tried from time to time.”
‘Courage, mes braves’, as we sail into the election period. Here’s hoping we come out of this democratic exercise with a better government.
[Image: Thomas Bühler, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20759233]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend