Political party logos offer cautionary tales about the pitfalls of Microsoft Paint
This is the second half of a two-part miniseries in which I explain the turgid, dull and sometimes simply bizarre symbols that voters will encounter next to the names of the less significant parties on the ballot paper in next week’s election.
Given the vacuum created by the electorate’s disaffection with the patent shortcomings of the three major contenders, this could be a moment for the smaller parties to shine. But
sadly, they have very little to offer the reasonable democrat.
Happily, they have lots to offer when it comes to cautionary tales about the uses and abuses of Microsoft Paint.
The one-man band who is the Democratic Liberal Congress, one Patrick Pillay, may not be a whizz at marketing but appears to have given some thought to a clear logo: his chirpy thumbs up will stand proud on the ballot paper for all 52 of his likely voters to find.
Some, however, outsourced their logo design to eager allegorists who didn’t anticipate the crippling effect of it being shrunk to the size of a baby’s thumbnail. The Economic Emancipation Forum includes a circle divided into nifty seasonal quadrants depicting nature’s bounty. This is lost in the oversimplification of the polls, cruelly reducing EcoForum’s logo to an inverted version of the national flag of Romania (or is it Chad)?
The Compatriots of SA an actual party name, I kid you not
decided to go for more readily recognisable iconography. It is left to voters to figure out why a party that professes to represent the interests of South Africans descended from the Khoi and the San has borrowed its design from Disney’s The
Lion King.
A fellow graduate from the Visual School of Cognitive Dissonance must have been involved in the development of a logo to match the syntactical nightmare that is Power of Africans Unity. This variation on the German coat of arms it could also be from Austria or Poland, or perhaps even be the seal of the US reproduces the well-known SA symbol of the spatchcock eagle. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and say it is a phoenix rising from the ashes of Cope and the UDM, the former political homes of leader Julius Nsingwane.
Another logo that takes the form of a Rorschach test belongs to a party that delights in the longest name ever in a slot on the ballot: the SA Maintenance and Estate Beneficiaries Association. These guys embody “a bright idea” through a wonky hand-drawn light bulb that looks oddly like a toy doll’s milk bottle. No wait, it’s a dildo. That would explain the Cupid figure and the little red heart.
One could go on almost indefinitely. There are so many miniature parties, so many horrendous logos. Patricia de Lille’s Good party recalling the delicate burnt orange of her heady days at the helm of the Independent Democrats, as well as an amber traffic light that says WARNING! The Hulk hands of the Afrikan Alliance of Social Democrats, holding an arched chain under which a
bird with a green beak is either preening itself or eating itself or vomiting because it did both.
You’d be forgiven for looking down the ballot sheet for the Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds party.
Finally, reader, beware the purple people eaters on the ballot. There are two of them, ostensibly on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum.
The African Content Movement of Hlaudi Motsoeneng hopes to dazzle and perhaps even hypnotise voters with its crystal ball of golden rays. But whether you see two hands reaching to grab Africa or a giant venus flytrap about to swallow the continent, the nightmare vision is clear.
And what to make of the purple cow of the Capitalist Party? Don’t be fooled by the BEE fronting that purports to claim cattle as traditional African symbols of wealth accumulation; this pro-gun cluster of clumsy libertarians flirts with ethnonationalism and the rhetoric of US “conservatism” (red flag, not purple). It’s basically bull **** .