‘Fake’ callers part of shady business of attracting votes

WAR rooms are OK. Cheating is not.

They are an integral part of elections campaigns across the world — but the one allegedly run by Walter Sisulu’s grandson Shaka seems to have broken the rules.

All major political parties, including the ANC and the DA, have set up such structures to strategise how to win over voters.

Strategic communicator Chris Vick told the Sunday Times the ANC had assembled such teams since the first democratic elections in 1994. He had been approached to join Sisulu’s team, but declined.

Businesswoman Sihle Bolani said the ANC had appointed her public relations company to run a war room ahead of last year’s local government elections.

The campaign involved registering bogus Twitter handles and distributing fake news and posters to discredit the opposition. Bolani took the party to court to recover R2.3-million owed to her.

Vick said the war rooms he had been part of had not been involved in dirty campaigns.

“It was a proactive, positive intervention, not dirty tricks.

“The concept of a war room is not a new one. It’s probably been [there] in every election since 1994. It’s been common to have a place where you bring together the strategists, the organisers, the communicators, because you want consistency in the messaging . . . what is new is having a separate budget for it and running all these [negative] activities,” said Vick.

“I did a presentation at an ANC workshop in 2014 and proposed the establishment of a war room to enable the ANC to better co-ordinate its communication but that was all legitimate, above board.”

The ANC is not the only party alleged to have run a sinister election campaign last year.

The DA was accused of using its Cape Town nerve centre to flood lines to radio stations.

DA employees and supporters became regular callers, pretending to be ordinary people complaining about poor service delivery in ANC-run areas.

A member of the 702 production team, who asked to remain anonymous, said: “It was very strange — there would be backto-back calls from people who would voluntarily declare that they would vote DA because the ANC had failed them. These ’NO CHEATING’: Chris Vick calls were coming from the same number and unfortunately we only picked [that] up after the fact.”

Radio presenter Redi Tlhabi last year spoke about the issue on her Twitter account: “Oh u talking about DA callers who VOLUNTARILY call from SAME nr, raise SAME issue! Geez, I wonder how we got THAT nr.”

Mabine Seabe, spokesman for DA leader Mmusi Maimane, said such a team existed.

“We’ve got brand ambassadors who are members and supporters of the party who are given information on what matters to communicate on and through their own time and re-

When a brand attaches itself to a celebrity, that is advantageous

sources they call into radio stations and have tweets, but it’s nothing in terms of fabrication of sentiments.”

Sisulu’s war room planned to hire socialites, musicians and TV personalities to propel its “dirty campaign”.

Groovin Nchabeleng, a marketing and advertising executive who does voluntary work for the ANC, said celebrities were crowd-pullers.

“In this age of celebrity culture, celebrities have millions of followers over whom they have considerable influence and impact.

“So when a brand — in this case the ANC — attaches itself to a celebrity, that association is bound to prove advantageous to the brand.

“It’s a global phenomenon. You can’t go wrong with celebrities. In terms of impact and deliverables, they produce. If celebrities didn’t produce desired results, brands would not be associating themselves with famous people,” he said.