Cacophonies of influences bombard South Africa’s 26.7 million voters daily. Most of them have made up their minds; some are simply serially committed to long-time political homes. Party identification and corresponding voting are the core factors that drive election outcomes. It is the most stable of political orientations, yet not cast in stone. Foul political weather can chip away at seemingly solid edifices and convergent counter-pulls can bring change. These dynamics apply to Campaign 2019 where the African National Congress, in its fragile and threatened dominance, is the centrepiece of the election campaign.

Opposition parties’ best prospects for progress are if they eat into the ANC base. Previously, with Jacob Zuma as the main character, the Democratic Alliance was feasting on the ANC corpus. Ramaphosa, the Don Quixote who is storming (and trying to convert to fortitude) the ANC fortress, is blocking this inroad. The Economic Freedom Fighters, largely due to a political-demographic change in the voter body, are absorbing new and younger voters who might in different times have charted their way into the ANC.

For the ANC to retain even its volatile dominance, its campaigning needs to accomplish the dual tasks of consolidating weak support in its own ranks, and winning over (or winning back) vacillating opposition party supporters. From several recent surveys, we know that these layers of support constitute not more than about 10 percent of the current electorate. Not massive numbers, but enough to swing crucial results.

It is these hearts and minds that the campaign cacophony targets. The new cynicism of the electorate is a crucial factor in the campaigns. The “less bad” debate on the limited choice between flawed and faltering parties rules. A political party that fosters the image of being less bad than others might very well win, as long as turnout remains continuously high. South Africans still love their elections and they know there is going to be a government (of a tainted party or parties) come the morning after the ballot.

The ANC has a starting block advantage. It comes with severely dented but nevertheless liberation credentials. It has worked hard at rekindling memories of liberation in the wake of Zumaist fallout. Stubborn legacies of apartheid and colonialism sustain the Aluta Continua argument. The DA has a core base, but its growth of recent elections comprises less committed support – and is susceptible to being won over by the ANC’s flagship campaign chip of Warrior Ramaphosa. EFF supporters are all relatively new to the newish party; they are also at the quite stable cusp of a young-angry-defiant political-demographic wave.

In this electoral war, literally every breath a party like the ANC takes constitutes campaigning. The political consciousness, party choice and vote intention of many are affected by daily occurrences in government proclaiming or blocking policies and legislation, in new revelations of corruption that explode onto the public stage almost daily via the phalanx of commissions of inquiry, or, in more positive ways, in efforts to reclaim and repopulate public institutions. Add to this the political parties’ own actions, such as misogynistic and femicidist tendencies, refusal to recall e-tolls, or inability to marry egalitarian policy action to business and investment enthusiasm… and all of South Africa’s problematic present is in the elections bucket.

From studies of political attitude change, we know that political identification changes not from one single influence, but when multiple influences converge their messages become mutually reinforcing. In Campaign 2019 there is a feast of campaign signals and it all depends which the weak and wavering – perhaps just honest and realistic – prospective voters will be exposed to.

The campaign story of the time is one of multiple mixed messages, and on this front, a party like the ANC is successful in limiting the unidirectional nature of discouraging, “the ANC is corrupt and falling” messages to the voters. In the time of Zuma, Election 2014 and local elections 2016, the de facto (through actions) messages to voters were overwhelmingly one-way. The ANC tried its positive words messages about “doing more and doing better and despite all impressions doing really well”. But there was no moving beyond Zuma at that time. The ANC 2019 has Ramaphosa, the commissions of inquiry and the hope that there will be justice (in due course), no retribution meted out at Ramaphosaists at the ANC’s mid-2020 National General Council, that an honest state is still possible, no more Bosasa skeletons for Cyril, and the hope that the ANC candidate list will not destroy the hope.

The ANC is beyond the point of being clearly good, clean, virtuous, caring, responsible. But it is competing in the contest of the “less bad parties”. Thus the ANC of 2019, going into an election that will make or break it, could be saved by “mixed messages”. DM