SA’s ‘my stadium is fuller than yours’ election strategy

AThe point is people can be angry with the ANC, can be subjected to a lot of pain by the ANC — and still vote for it

s the ANC celebrated its annual January 8 statement in Mbombela last weekend, one of the experts — well, not former PhD Dr, now Ms, Thabi Leoka for sure — made an important observation about the coming elections.

“Why is the stadium so full? I thought we agreed that we are taking these people [ANC] out this year,” the expert tweeter remarked about a stadium whose capacity is 44,000. That is less than half the capacity of the FNB Stadium, which the EFF filled when it celebrated its 10th birthday in July last year — sending the message that its growth has been exponential.

Next month, the EFF is going to Moses Mabhida Stadium in eThekwini, capacity 56,000, to launch its election manifesto — the choice of the venue is, first, to show the EFF is not only a Gauteng party and second to demonstrate it can consistently draw bigger crowds than the ANC.

In politics, appearance is reality. “Optics are rarely everything. Sometimes, they’re simply a distraction. But occasionally, if only for a few hours, they are the only thing,” Pulitzer-winner critic Robin Givhan once wrote in the Washington Post.

For the ANC, being able to fill the Mbombela stadium is a great victory. In Gauteng, where the party used to fill FNB Stadium (95,000 capacity) and then use Ellis Park (63,000) as an overflow venue, it has struggled recently to fill the Dobsonville stadium, whose capacity is

24,000.

It is now on the mend, I think. Don’t be fooled by Fikile Mbalula’s foot-in-mouth disease. Expect the ANC to try to use a venue bigger than Mbombela for its siyanqoba (victory) rally. And make no mistake — the ANC is not dead, well, not yet! President Cyril Ramaphosa was right when he said opposition parties would be making a big error to think that the ruling party will roll over while they position themselves in right-wing charters to take over the country.

He knows that poor South Africans, who constitute the majority of voters, are among the most patient and forgiving in the world. Remember how Ramaphosa went to Hammanskraal in the aftermath of the deadly cholera outbreak, and the masses who were supposedly angry with the ANC leader came out in their numbers to shake his hand?

Recently, former president Jacob Zuma was rejected by families of Umkhonto we Sizwe soldiers who did not want him to visit. What’s crucial in their response were the words: “We remain loyal to the ANC.” The point is people can be angry with the ANC, can be subjected to a lot of pain by the ANC — and still vote for it.

The black middle class, whose rise to the top is largely because of ANC policies, have long stopped voting for the party. Zuma tried to ridicule them by calling them the “clever blacks” when they wouldn’t vote for him. And these have also long seen through the lies of Thuma Mina and the façade that is the “new dawn”.

On talk-radio and in letters to editors, they — along with what former DA MP Ghaleb Cachalia calls the rightwingers in the DA — complain about the collapse of service delivery. In highfalutin terms they talk about the importance of Richards Bay and about the collapsing ports, rising interest rates and the unaffordability of debt. The poor are affected by all this but will still be forgiving.

All they will hear, mostly on the SABC’s African language stations, is that yet another black leader has left the DA. And I am not talking about Cachalia or those who left last year. Khume Ramulifho spent 20 years in the DA only to drop it for Rise Mzansi this week. His message is the same as that of other black leaders who left it. And therein lies another option for the black middle class —

Rise Mzansi. For the more radically inclined, there’s the EFF.

The choice facing the poor will be between a party that is incompetent and corrupt, but that from time to time delivers services to the poor black majority; and another party that can’t retain its black leaders. Voters are not stupid. The Mbombelas and Mabhidas will be packed, and some will still ask: “Why is the stadium so full? I thought we agreed to remove these guys?”

And Ramaphosa, like most politicians, will pull off unconscionably opportunistic stunts such as claiming the right-wing parties will end pension payments if they win the elections. He knows it’s not true, barring the R350 grant. He is also aware there’s about 28-million South Africans who are grateful for their social security pittances. All he needs in the upcoming elections is for about 12-million South Africans to be swayed by his boasts.