Values and virtues of lamppost literature

Fear and loathing not the answer, says Pallo Jordan in his analysis of opposition parties' election campaigns

STOP an ANC Two-Thirds Majority, screamed the blue, white and yellow poster from the lamppost. Tony Leon Needs You, proclaimed another in the same hues. Thus began the Democratic Party's (DP's) drive to encourage its supporters to register as voters.

Not to be outdone the New National Party (NNP) summoned its forces with the stirring call to Register Against Crime. Running true to form, the NNP peddled its stock in trade, encouraging fear and insecurity in the electorate.

Supporters who might have been confused by the name change were reassured by the constancy in party colours: orange, white and blue, the colours of the apartheid republic's flag and the insignia, NP, sans the N.

Many supporters of both parties remained unconvinced about doing the right thing. Their uncertainty was reinforced by the court action of the authors of these slogans.

Evidently unsure that their negative messages would have the desired effect, both the DP and the NNP sought relief from the courts to compel the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) to allow unregistered voters to vote. A ruling in their favour would have rendered their posters superfluous.

Once registration had passed the election campaign began in earnest.

From its initial Kitchener image, the DP moved to that of Churchill, decking lampposts with Tony Leon's picture alongside the slogan The Guts to Fight Back.

This belligerent tone was sustained in a second and third poster in what appears to be an unfolding campaign to convince us that the DP are not wimps. Repeating the same Fight Back in poster number two and ending with a third - You have the Power. Fight Back.

Less imaginatively, the NNP sought to ride on Leon's coattails with Mugabe has Two-Thirds. And, depending on where you live, the NNP exhorted you to Hang Rapists and Killers and to show No Mercy for Criminals.

Interestingly in the Western Cape, a province plagued by the very "rapists and killers" whom the NNP assures us it will hang, its blood-thirsty battle cry has been played down in favour of a variety of messages targeting different racial constituencies.

In Cape Town's city centre, the leafy suburbs along the Table Mountain green belt and in historically coloured areas of the Cape Flats, the NNP's message Keep the ANC out of the Western Cape, alternates with Keep the Western Cape NP - without the qualifying "new". In Khayelitsha and Gugulethu the posters read: For the Future of Your Children, Keep the Western Cape NP.

Old habits die hard as these separate but equal posters testify. The NNP campaign is unfocused. Its strategists seem to believe in a blunderbuss approach. Fire away in the hope that at least some of the pellets will inflict some damage.

It has peppered the streets with a variety of negative messages ranging from wild assertions that taxes have gone up under the democratic government to No jobs for Matriculants.

Make SA Governable, declared the IFP's family group of three elephants, mimicking a slogan coined by the African National Congress underground during the second half of the 1980s.

As if to give the lie to the party's commitment to good governance, on Tuesday last week one of its leading legislators led the police to an arms cache he and others had secreted in bunkers close to Ulundi.

The Freedom Front offers Die Span Met 'n Plan, never quite defining what the plan is.

More modestly the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania has produced busy little posters with print that is illegible except to the most laid back pedestrians who can take time out to read them. But then, clarity was never this party's strongest point.

The even tinier African Christian Democratic Party seems confused about the real purpose of elections, salvation or constituting a government.

From the election posters, of the main opposition parties, a new voter, unfamiliar with SA politics, would find it impossible to get a firm grip on the issues.

None of them advocates a single solution to SA's problems - except the NNP, which seems to think that blood sacrificed by the state will create jobs, build schools and uplift the poor.

A more disturbing spectacle is the DP's campaign. Vote Your Hopes, Not Your Fears, the DP said during the whites-only referendum in 1992. This time it is telling voters to damn hope and vote their fears. Its logo also conveys an uncomfortable message - a small yellow (the colour of cowardice) circle, in the embrace of blue (the colour of conservatism) wings, enfolded within a larger white (the complexion of the party) circle.

The ANC's understated, nonhysterical campaign that has dwelt on the real political issues presents a sharp contrast to the belligerent tone of the DP and NNP's hangmen.

It's Your Future, Protect it, Register to Vote, ANC posters read. Suiting words with deeds, when the IEC had difficulties in manning registration stations, ANC members volunteered to assist, much to the chagrin of a churlish opposition which preferred to sit on its hands.

Except for one mischievous stunt by its Western Cape region, who thought they could unpack the subtext of the DP's Fight Back slogan, the ANC has abstained from negative campaigning. A Better Life for All in a country with endemic unemployment, hunger, and spiralling crime seems to make more sense than promising a good fight or rapists the rope.

Mbeki for President, is a slogan for which the opposition has no riposte. None of them can field a credible presidential candidate.

The ANC has approached SA's second democratic election with a dignity worthy of its age. Its campaign evinces the quiet confidence of a party that knows what it is doing and where it is going.

At every point it has homed in on the burning issues that affect the quality of ordinary people's lives. Its eyes squarely fixed on the prize of a convincing majority, it is aiming for a clear mandate to translate its manifesto into a vigorous programme of reform.

Perhaps that is the distinction between the politics of hope and the politics of despair.

Jordan is minister of environmental affairs and tourism.

Business Day 19 May 1999