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Rennie Naidoo & Allister Sparks
The recent Democratic Alliance spectacle — the kind of orchestrated event normally the hallmark of the ANC’s and EFF’s scheming — represents a turning point in South African politics.

It represents the death knell of the party intellectual and the triumph of the political marketer, the fall of the party advisor and the rise of the party public relations guru, the demise of the citizen and the birth of the political consumer.

Never again will there be a Van Zyl Slabbert or Sisulu. Never again will there be a De Klerk or Mandela. The political “cult of personality” machinery will be spewing out more Zilles, Zumas and Malemas.

These political celebrities will be crafted in the public relations assembly line, packaged, promoted, put on display and sold like the standard, transient, throwaway products of the entertainment industry.

And while these celebrities may be deficient in intellect, they will definitely be qualified masters at blurring the differences between entertainment, news and politics.

A much lauded skill in the Age of the Media — a skill cherished by the largely illiterate and addicted consumers of media manipulation.

The public relations guru and advertising expert’s “modern” Machiavellian techniques of elaborate billboard campaigns, posters, ‘educational films’, booklets, pamphlets, party conferences, internal referendums, lobbying events, costumes, song and dance sketches, television, talk radio, Internet sites, blogs, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, all kinds of celebrity endorsements, hosts of public relations staff and journalists, and let us not forget posh catering and so on, must cost a fortune.

But it does not end there.

Superficial philosophy lessons on the virtue of greed, ruthlessness and ambition; crude coaching lessons on the art of deception and manipulation, on the virtue of sucking up and networking; dance, body language, rhetoric etc.

This elaborate machinery manufactures not just the political party’s brand and the political leader’s brand but it also constructs the political consumer brand and the passive, individual, political consumer.

Like in the US and UK, this is exactly the kind of “amusing” rubbish that will push the buttons of the majority of citizens — like defective, unthinking, image-fuelled robots — to vote. This is democracy in the Age of Hyper Distractions.

Can the alienated, bored, excitement-seeking, distracted political consumer take personal responsibility for their media literacy and contribute towards the creation of a truly vibrant and participative democracy?

This is very unlikely. Political consumers have been systematically brainwashed into thinking that they have the most sacred and satisfying right of all — the right to consume images.

The ANC’s legacy as a liberation movement is all that is keeping it in power, but that is a diminishing asset. The ANC’s support is flaking away to the left and to the right, which is why next year’s elections could be the most important yet held in the new South Africa.

The Economic Freedom Fighters is growing apace on the left as many of the disillusioned, especially the unemployed black youth, respond to Julius Malema’s radical populism.

At the same time the DA is continuing to eat into the ANC’s more rational support base.

This flaking away of ANC support on both flanks could transform the local government elections into a game-changing event.

Current indications are that the ANC could well lose Nelson Mandela Bay metro council, comprising Port Elizabeth and surrounding industrial towns, with the DA gaining a clear majority. The ANC is in a mess throughout the Eastern Cape, evidenced by the fact that the DA has just won control of Fort Hare University’s students’ representative council — Fort Hare being the iconic nursery of all the ANC’s great leaders in the past.

There is also a possibility that the ANC could fall short of an outright majority in three other metro councils — Greater Johannesburg, Tswane (Pretoria) and Ekuruleni (East Rand).

Falling short in those, or even just one of them, would place the ANC in the awkward situation of having to find a coalition partner to govern. If it tried to rule from a minority position, the opposition parties would assuredly team up to pass a vote of no-confidence in the council and topple it. In that event the ANC would have to choose between the DA and the EFF to have a partner that could get it over the majority line.

It is hard to imagine the ANC being eager to clutch the viperous Malema to its bosom once more. Moreover, the EFF’s reckless policies would be hard to incorporate into any administration. Indeed, one of the more intriguing features of the local government elections is that the EFF is likely to win control of some municipalities – and then have to run them. The results will be interesting to watch.

This is where the value of a black DA leader like recently elected Mmusi Maimane becomes evident. Tony Leon, in his new role as a journalist, has noted that there is little evidence to show that a black leader is a ticket to success in our elections. He points out that the likes of Mosiaou Lekota, Bantu Holomisa, Mampela Ramphele and a string of Pan-Africanist Congress leaders have been singularly unsuccessful, while two whities, he and Helen Zille, have grown the DA’s vote from 350000 to more than four-million in 20 years.

Zille, much the more successful of the two, has managed to break through the DA’s white ceiling. The four-million votes the DA attracted in last year’s national election were nearly one-and-a-half times the total white population of voting age. With a 73.48% voter turnout, that means more than a million black people must have voted DA.

A tremendous achievement, to be sure. But we submit that negotiating coalition politics is different. The ANC, having derided the DA for years as “a white party” led by whites and dedicated to maintaining white privileges, would fear a backlash if it were to cut a partnership deal with a white party leader with an image as strong as Zille’s.

Maimane would make it easier for the ANC to contemplate such a deal, especially since he was once a member of the ANC and lived for most of his life in Soweto. – News24