Biggest threats to polls
On 25 April, 1994 a car bomb exploded in central Johannesburg, killing nine people. This was two days before the historic 1994 election that brought democracy to South Africa. Other bombs went off in other parts of the country, threatening chaos on election day.
The election went ahead despite the threats and those who set up those bombs went to jail and served time. Thirty years later, the biggest threat to the election on 29 May is not rightwing forces, but parties contesting the election.
Visvin Reddy, an eThekwini councillor, has threatened at rallies that if the MK party is not on the ballot paper “all hell will break loose. No South African will go to the polls”.
The MK party is former president Jacob Zuma’s new political home after he ditched the party of his youth, the ANC.
Reddy’s comments come after the ANC has taken MK to court over the use of the name, which belongs to the now defunct armed wing of the ANC. It is no surprise whatsoever that a leader of that party can utter such words, seeing as it is the same kind of threat that Jacob Zuma supporters like Carl Niehaus made ahead of Zuma’s incarceration in 2021.
Knowing the kind of violence that was unleashed in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng following the same kind of threat should put authorities on full alert.
Obviously, the likes of Reddy thrive on the media spotlight being on them but the threats need to be seen for what they are – a threat to democracy.
If, by chance, through legal means or failure to meet the Electoral Commission of South Africa’s requirements the MK party fails to make it to the ballot, that is no reason to threaten violence and mayhem.
While Reddy promises physical violence, it needs to be acknowledged that there is also another kind of threat to the elections from South Africa’s second-biggest political party, the Democratic Alliance (DA).
Their threat goes to the heart of the legitimacy of the election. The DA, as the country’s official opposition, has no business writing to the United States Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, alleging that the ANC’s desperation to hold on to power is a threat to the country because it is leading it to form alliances with “malign” forces.
What the DA expects the US to do about South Africa’s choice of friends is baffling. It is not as though the ANC woke up to the fact that they are losing their grip on power and immediately called up Russia and China to help it retain power. The ANC has always had the “friends” they have, good or bad.
When the 1994 election happened, Cuba and a whole host of “malign” forces were the ANC’s biggest backers. For the DA to now highlight this as a threat to the electoral outcome is laughable.
The only thing the DA and MK are doing is creating an atmosphere of doubt around an election without reason. It has been shown that the biggest casualty during modern elections is the truth because of the advent of AI and fake social media news.
That is not a threat that is easy to deal with for any government, without placing restrictions on people’s rights to a free media.
That is why legitimate political parties like the DA and MK – if they win their legal battles – must not aid these faceless social media terrorists in subverting the truth and creating fear.