Gearing up to win the vote of the born-frees
Opposition parties see first-time voters as more receptive to their message, writes Richard Calland
THE poster war has begun in earnest, marking the start of the 2014 election campaign. Like dogs marking their territory with their leg up the lamppost, it is an apparently deeply embedded convention of South African electoral politics to assert presence and power by the sheer weight of roadside posters.
One of the new entrants to the electoral marketplace, Mamphela Ramphele’s Agang, has gone very early in its attempt to steal a march on its competitors. However, while Ramphele’s photo offers passers-by a smiling rendition of her charisma and steely sense of purpose, it threatens road safety as one peers closely at the poster to try to ascertain whether the yellow smudge above her face is in fact Agang’s logo or merely the contribution of a passing bird.
Whoever signed off on the design of that poster ought to be prosecuted for crimes against election campaign marketing — unless, that is, Ramphele has decided that Agang is such a hopeless name and brand that she wishes to submerge it beneath her not inconsiderable personality.
The Democratic Alliance — which always “goes early” (whereas the ANC is a notoriously late riser in the poster war) — is more wisely focusing on voter registration. Its own polling tells it that it is more popular among “likely voters”, which makes sense: those who are most eager for a change in government are more likely to exercise their right to vote.
The DA’s core strategy is to focus on winning young(er) black voters, many of whom will not have voted before and therefore need to register. Interestingly, this strategy is focused on age and not class: the bold aspiration is to try to win up to 15% of black voters across the social strata, but specifically targeted at the younger generation.
The (rebuttable) proposition is this: that these young people have less to lose by voting for a party other than the ANC because their emotional ties with the ANC are weaker than those of their parents and elder siblings. And, furthermore, employment prospects are most dismal in the 18 to 29 age bracket, as the government’s own figures confirm.
This proposition is supported by polling over many years from the Afrobarometer data that reveals that the younger the potential voter, the less likely they are to identify with the ANC — “identification” being an even more valuable indicator of longer-term party loyalty than the less nuanced question: Who would you vote for if there were an election tomorrow?
The contest for the so-called born frees — a mythical group about whose views on life and politics precious little is known, but who number as many as three million eligible new voters — will be a key dimension of the new electoral landscape.
Much may hinge on how many of the newly eligible voters take the trouble to register — something that will be closely watched by all the parties.
Aside from the seminal importance of persuading such potential swing voters to register, how strategically straightforward is this campaign for the DA?
Some commentators have questioned whether it is plausible to aggressively pursue new support among black voters while at the same time sustaining the party’s core vote, which is essentially among middle-class white and Indian voters and working-class coloured voters in the Western Cape.
This “dilemma”, if that is what it is, may be more a reflection of latent tensions beneath the surface of a fast-growing party organisation in which old Nats now cohabit with young, ambitious politicians such as the dynamic DA candidate for Gauteng premier, Mmusi Maimane, whose attitude to social transformation is markedly more progressive and, therefore, appealing to black voters.
Now advised by the seasoned pollster Stan Greenberg, one of whose other clients, Bill de Blasio, this month won a historic victory to become New York’s first Democrat mayor in 20 years, DA insiders insist that there is “no evidence at all” that pursuing black voters will deter the party’s traditional vote, whose support, they believe, is further entrenched “the more the DA looks like a competitive party nationally”.
That may be, because the test for the DA as it built a track record in government in the Western Cape and Cape Town was whether it could demonstrate a commitment to serving all communities and not just its core voters.
In opposition, the task of the ANC was to prove that the DA had failed to pass the test. But, as in the 2011 local government elections, the ANC appears to be struggling to marshal the evidence to make a sufficiently compelling case against the DA’s record in government, a
The battle for the young vote is not just about 2014, but about the next phase of South Africa’s democratic consolidation
strategic failure that, in 2014, will have adverse consequences for the ANC nationally as well as regionally.
Although they know that things could change significantly as the ANC election machine grinds into action as election day approaches, the DA campaign management are convinced of their own polling numbers, which suggest that the ANC’s majority in Gauteng may genuinely be in doubt.
Whether the DA could muster a viable coalition to govern in the “blue chip” province or not, were the ANC to be pushed beneath 50% for the first time in Gauteng, it would represent a game-changer that would really tee up the 2016 Johannesburg and Pretoria metro elections and, beyond, the 2019 national election.
As the DA’s ambitions swell and the party becomes more ideologically heterodox and therefore complex and difficult to manage, so questions of strategy and tactics will arise with greater frequency. In this respect, former DA strategist Gareth van Onselen has pointed out what he avers to be the unwise tactical choices that the DA has made in recent months, particularly on the vexed issue of black economic empowerment.
Van Onselen’s die-hard liberal instincts probably make it hard for him to support any form of affirmative action, and all but impossible to countenance the sort of overtures that Maimane has been making to ANC voters, because they depart from the DA’s wellworn negative narrative about the ANC. This may be as much a “straw man” as the bigger issue about the “dilemma” of pursuing black voters in general.
Surely the whole point about having a leader such as Maimane is that he has the political dexterity to communicate with potential black voters in a way — and with a credibility — that has evaded previous DA leaders?
After all, the DA’s current (as opposed to its past) strategists accept that having black leadership — although not necessarily a black leader — “means everything” for the party’s engagement strategy with young black voters.
Many of Greenberg’s left-of-centre clients around the world have struggled to modernise to attract young voters, which has undermined their political sustainability.
Now he finds himself a part of a new front line in South Africa’s modern political history because the battle for the young vote is not just about 2014, but about the next phase of its democratic consolidation. That is because, in turn, it focuses on the question of which party has the more sustainable political strategy for the future — something that, as it continues to think it can reap the liberation dividend in perpetuity, the ANC may be underestimating at its peril.
Calland is director of the democratic governance & rights unit at the University of Cape Town and author of ‘The Zuma Years: South Africa’s Changing Face of Power’, published by Zebra Press