The silly season has started

With South Africa’s municipal elections due to take place on May 18, we will, as from this week, publish a weekly update called Election Watch 2011, providing a briefing on the latest developments.

The silly season is fully upon us as political parties, most having by now launched their election manifestoes, are out there using every trick in the book to woo voters into electing their candidates to the councils of South Africa’s 283 municipalities. As usual in the run-up to elections, it is a time when almost everything that is said should be taken with a pinch of salt.

ANC’s kick-off

In February the African National Congress (ANC) kicked off the election show with the launch of its election manifesto – an event that drew little broad support and looked more like a Julius Malema fan club meeting. Nonetheless, ANC president Jacob Zuma unveiled what could best be described as the regurgitation of old promises and recent speeches.

Adapting the ANC 2009 election manifesto to fit into a local government framework, Zuma rolled together bits and pieces of his speech delivered at the ANC’s 99th birthday in January, his State of the Nation address and Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s budget speech.

Zuma maintained that local government has a critical role to play in the implementation of the ANC’s 2009 election manifesto priorities. He said in localising the priorities of the 2009 manifesto the ANC will:

• build local economies to create more employment and sustainable livelihoods;
• improve local public services and broaden access to them; build more united, non-racial, integrated and safer communities;
• ensure much more active community participation in local government; and
• ensure more effective, accountable and clean local government, working together with national and provincial government.

At the manifesto launch rally the ANC Youth League’s president, Malema, as well as the general secretaries of the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the SA Communist Party (SACP) urged people to vote for the ANC despite their grievances and differences. While that may have put paid to speculation whether or not Cosatu would fully support the ANC in these elections as in the past, it certainly did not end the differences that are tearing the alliance and the party apart.

For even as the deadline for political parties to submit their election candidate lists to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) arrived on Friday bitter feuds over the election lists were still dividing the ANC in a number of provinces. Most seriously so in the Western Cape, North West and Eastern Cape.  These battles could cost the ANC support in some areas, as a number of disgruntled branches and/or candidates have vowed to fight the elections as independents.

Other issues could also cost the ANC dearly, such as the race furore caused by the remarks of government spokesman Jimmy Manyi about coloureds. This could most notably be the case in the Western Cape where the coloured vote has cost the ANC loss of power to the Democratic Alliance (DA) in both the provincial government and the Cape Town metro, as well as in a number of other municipalities.

Despite Zuma at the launch in Paarl being flanked on the stage by two prominent coloured alliance leaders -- the ANC’s new leader in this province, Marius Fransman, and Cosatu’s Western Cape leader and Cape Town mayoral candidate Tony Ehrenreich -- local coloured people seemed to show little interest in the event.

It was also the Manyi-triggered race issue that led DA leader Helen Zille to accuse the ANC of having nothing to offer the electorate and instead of making local service delivery the issue, it was making race the issue.

But the ANC still maintains it wants to win back municipalities in the Western Cape with Cape Town its first priority.

At present the ANC controls – with coalition partners in some instances - 14 municipalities out of 30 in the Western Cape.

Given by-election trends over the past two years and the talk on the ground in the Western Cape, the ANC may find the task quite daunting, if not impossible.

DA’s launch

Launching the DA’s election manifesto at Walter Sisulu Freedom Square, in Kliptown, Soweto this past Saturday, Zille said the May 18 poll will be “a watershed in South Africa's democracy”.

She said that for the first time since 1994, the DA enters this election as a party with a track-record in government and is no longer just a party of opposition. Using a number of examples of rock-bottom municipalities turned around by the DA , she said that where the DA governs it actually delivers “a better life for all” instead of just promising it.

She claimed the DA had turned Cape Town around from being the worst-run city in South Africa to the best-run , cutting debt levels and improving revenue collections.

She urged voters not to view the election as a contest between race groups, as in the past, but to make the achievement of excellent service delivery for all the key issue. The DA manifesto promises:

• to overcome poverty through job creation;
• to end corruption;
• effective local government, appointing mayors and councillors qualified for their jobs;
• fairness in collecting rates and taxes;
• improved infrastructure;
• internet access for more people;
• to fight crime;
• better access for all to basic and social services;
• to step up municipal healthcare services; and
• skills and small business development aid.

COPE’s attack

The Congress of the People (COPE) meanwhile has again accused the ANC of making local government  “dangerously dysfunctional”  through its system of cadre deployment. Indeed cadre deployment has become a major headache for local government in South Africa, promoting nepotism, incompetence, patronage and corruption, the party said.

The ANC itself has recognised this as a problem and promised to nominate only candidates fit for the job this time round, as well as preventing party officials from holding senior positions in a municipality.

Meanwhile the ANC is setting another precedent in this election with the establishment of its first overseas branch in London since it deactivated its international branches in 1994.

According to the IEC just more than 12,000 votes were cast outside South Africa in the previous general election in 2009, of which 7,833 were cast in London. Of the 12,000 votes 77% were for the DA, 12% for COPE, and only 8% for the ANC.

Signs of intolerance

Meanwhile there is much concern in various quarters over what appears to be rising political intolerance. Last week Monday there was widespread condemnation when Patricia de Lille, leader of the Independent Democrats (ID), which is in partnership with the DA, tried to address a mainly ANC Human Rights Day crowd in Cape Town. Among those who warned against this kind of intolerance was the SA Council of Churches.

Also last week the ANC-aligned Young Communist League of SA (YCL) condemned the heckling of SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande at the Tshwane University of Technology. The YCL blamed the heckling on two other ANC allies, the SA Students Congress (Sasco) and the National Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) which is affiliated to Cosatu.

Business organisations have criticised the fact that election day has been declared a public holiday which comes just two weeks after an effective 11-day break created by the glut of public holidays between Easter and Labour Day. Schools will be closed for this period.

They say many workers will take three days annual leave between Easter and Labour Day and be absent from work for 11 days. There is concern that two weeks later with the election holiday on a Wednesday, many people will take two more days of annual leave and enjoy a five-day long weekend, disrupting productivity over the entire period.

With political parties having had to register their candidates with the IEC by 5pm this past Friday, the IEC will now, as the next step in the pre-election process, notify both political parties and independent candidates of non-compliance regarding outstanding documents. Independent candidates and political parties will then have to submit the outstanding documents to the IEC on 8 April.