Every election, whether municipal or national, is preceded by two rituals: the ruling party’s promises campaign, and the petition campaign by the Democratic Alliance (DA).
Hardly a week after the date for this year’s municipal elections was announced, the ANC was lucky enough to have the president testify before the Zondo commission.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I just cannot believe the timing was a coincidence. It was the perfect platform from which the president could launch the party’s campaign of countering corruption, fighting fraud and combating crookery within the party ranks.
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Of course, as his was testimony in front of the commission, it was widely reported on by the media – mainstream and social.
But, in this case, without the party having to add the mandatory footnote that this was electioneering, as demanded by the Electoral Commission of South Africa for all election advertisements. I must admit, well played. The president scored all the points without doing anything wrong.
While listening to the president testify, I received my first pre-election petition message from a friend in the DA. Sign the petition and support a Bill against cadre deployment, read the message.
Well, a quick internet search revealed that there have been quite a number of DA petitions doing the rounds.
There is the petition to stop exorbitant tariff increases in failing ANC-led municipalities, the petition to oppose the government’s plans to extend licence fees to streaming services such as Netflix and the emergency passport extension petition to name a few.
After nearly three decades of ANC promises, most of us have learnt that they are like the Stormers’ trophy cabinet – very empty.
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We have also learnt that the DA uses its petitions to build up a database so that they can bombard their supporters – and other innocent petition signees – with electioneering messages in the run-up to the polls.
Am I the only person crying out for an alternative – campaign-wise and party-wise?