The South African election story the media doesn't tell.
South Africa just held another election and as usual the media gave their feel good interpretation of the African National Congress government. And they ignore anything that doesn't fit the Saint Mandela story - it doesn't matter if he is no longer leading the ANC which is now lead by Mugabe cheerleader Thebo Mbeki.
The media has jumped on the "increasing" support for the ANC. But that's not true. In fact the number of votes that the ANC has received has declined steadily since the first non - racial election ten years ago. Now I wasn't in South Africa for this election. But I was there for the last two elections.
In the first election the ANC (which is a coalition of the ANC, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the Communist Party) received around 12.5 million votes ten years ago. Five years ago, in the second election their votes dropped to around 10 million. That's a big drop. Almost 2.5 million people, most of whom had only voted once in their life before, stayed home.
So the media harps on about how the ANC got a higher percentage of the vote. If their vote percentage declined, but the raw number of votes for the ANC increased, I'm sure the media would make that the story instead.
One thing is true. Many black South Africans are afraid to cross the ANC. They are not willing to vote against the ANC regardless of how dissatisfied they are. Many are not convinced that voting is "really secret" and are afraid a vote for the opposition will be noted and used against them. I've had numerous black South Africans tell me that this is their concern. They don't like how the ANC is running things but are afraid to vote against them. ANC "youth groups" (we call them gangs) are not adverse to beating supporters of opposition parties.
I sat in what was billed as a debate for the first election ten years ago. It was held at the Great Hall at the University of the Witswatersrand. There were representatives of different parties there to present their views. Only the ANC candidate (a high official in the Communist Party) was allowed to speak. Whenever any other candidate attempted to answer a question gangs of rampaging ANC youth would stand up, scream, stomp their feet and disrupt the proceedings. It was impossible to hear anything over the commotion. The ANC/CP official smiled at them when they did this. At the finale they went through the campus ripping up party posters of any opposition party.
In the Cape these ANC youth gangs threatened the life of Tony Leon, leader of the Democratic Party (and now official Opposition leader in the SA parliament). The DP had a history of being opposed to apartheid and supporting rights for blacks. That was of no matter when it comes to promoting the one party state of the ANC. Leon escaped the campus with his life as a gang tried to grab him and beat hm. (For the record, I do like Tony Leon. He wrote the introduction to my book on Zimbabwe and he's sent me some nice "fan" letters in response to other things I've written.)
There were some serious questions raised in this election about the conduct of the election in KwaZulu Natal - a region which the ANC does not control. And some of Tony Leon's election rallies in black areas (all well attended) were harassed by ANC sound trucks that would park outside the hall and use the speakers to prevent people inside from hearing what was being said.
Support for the ANC in the number of votes has dropped. Their percentage has increased. One way of doing this was that they passed all sorts of measures which guaranteed that Opposition voters would lose the right to vote. The media never talked about those measures - that is the media outside South Africa.
South Africa had been a British colony. As such many citizens had British passports but were South African citizens. In fact with a lot of anti - apartheid activity this was necessary. White opponents of apartheid would be denied South African passports to make it difficult for them to travel. Other nations harassed people with South African passports assuming them to be supporters of apartheid especially if they were white. (In fact most whites who actually held passports were opponents of apartheid and most whites who supported apartheid did not do much foreign travelling.)
In 1994 all South African residents were allowed to vote. The ANC changed the rule so that many white residents lost their right to vote regardless of how long they've lived in the country or even if they were born there. The ANC knew this would disproportionately effect white voters. In fact it only effected white voters and it reduced their numbers.
Next the ANC wanted to increase the number of black voters. So it offered free citizenship to all illegal immigrants (illegal immigrants only). There was one provision, the illegal immigrant had to be from a neighbouring country only. In other words, except for a tiny number of whites from Zimbabwe, the only people who could become citizens merely for the asking were black. Something like 100,000 new citizens were added to the voter's roll that way. The ANC was still unhappy so they extended it again until they reached their goal of 300,000 new voters.
Of course the rule that tossed out many white voters caused some of them to want to apply for formal citizenship. The ANC took care of that as well. The fees to become a permanent resident were increased by 100 fold. In fact the fees were steadily escalated. When I last checked they were 130 times higher than when the ANC came to power. This applied to legal immigrants from non neighbouring nations (white voters). Those the ANC perceived as being supportive of their policies were let in for free. Did you see that on CNN?
That still wasn't enough to satisfy the ANC. In 1994 many black voters were voting for the first time and needed to update their ID books. Fair enough. They could vote with any ID however but huge numbers preferred the new ID book. They got the books relatively quickly. Back then it took a few weeks to secure a new ID book.
In the second election the ANC changed the rules. A government study had shown that around 80% of black voters had the new ID books. Something like a third of white voters had the new book with most holding the older ID books. After one term of ANC rule the time needed to secure a new ID book had increased from a few weeks to several months. In addition the time to get processed at Home Affairs increased so much that one often had to wait in line all day just to hand in the form. You'd be told to come back in a couple of months to pick up the ID book. You'd come back, wait in line for several hours, and then be told to come back later since it wasn't ready. The last time I applied for my visa extension hte process, that previously took two weeks, took from February to July and required that I make around 10 trips in all. Each one required waiting in line.
The new ID book rule (and the new book was only required for voting and nothing else) cut out a huge percentage of white voters. Next the ANC pushed to extend voting rights to prisoners regardless of why they were in prison. They knew that over almost all prisoners were black. It was another ploy to increase the number of black voters specifically. They also tried, but failed, to extend voting rights to children down to 14 years of age. This would have dramatically increased the number of black voters but would have had minimal effect on white voting numbers.
Then the ANC wrote a new rule. Previously you could vote anywhere in the country. In the first election the ANC used this measure to bus thousands of supporters from areas they knew they would win to areas that were up in the air. It's how they secured their vote total in the Northern Cape Province. Now they said that one could only vote at the station in one's neighbourhood. And then they scheduled the election during school holidays. That impacted white voters more than other groups. And in South Africa a huge percentage of such holidays are booked and paid for in advance. The only time people can get away is during the school break. The ANC was aware this measure would reduce the number of white voters by many thousands while having minimal impact on their voters.
In the previous election citizens of South Africa who were overseas during the election could vote at the embassy or consulate. Most such voters are white. That measure was dropped with one proviso - employees of the South African government only could vote overseas. They told white voters who worked overseas or were on holiday that they didn't have the resources to take ballots in the embassies. Then they turned around and took ballots from black voters who were employed by the SA government.
These type of election scams were part and parcel of ANC "democracy". The media didn't talk about it outside South Africa. Busing voters to achieve electoral wins was ANC strategy. But try finding any of that in overseas media accounts. When the ANC realised that it would lose several of the regions in Johannesburg they simply abolished the regions they would lose and merged them in such a way as to guarantee a clean sweep for the ANC. The foreign press reported on how the ANC had an election victory but didn't mention what they did to get it.
Take poor Midrand as an example. Midrand is a region between Pretoria and Johannesburg. It was growing rapidly. In a few years it went from mostly farmland to bustling industrial parks, shopping centres, subdivisions, etc. Midrand was run quite well. It was relatively clean, infrastructure was in good shape and the residents were happy. The ANC was unhappy. It was controlled by the Democratic Party. So what to do? They abolished Midrand and merged half into Johannesburg and half into Pretoria, coincidentally areas the ANC controlled.
The ANC played dirty with election money. They set it up so the government funds most of the campaign costs and then made sure that they get almost all the money. They did allow outside donations and they received money from foreign governments and individuals like Ghaddafi. One foreign Islamic government was trying to buy a share in South Africa's monopoly phone service. They donated large sums to the ANC election campaign and got the contract they were looking for. In addition before each election the government would churn out all sorts of "information" leaflets distributed in post offices, hospitals, etc. all of which amounted to free campaing literature for the ANC. Government departments would uy large ads in newspaper extolling the virtues of the government. It was all electioneering at taxpayer expenses under the guise of being informative.
In 1994 the major newspapers in the country endorsed the DP. The ANC charged them with "subliminal racism" and hauled them before the misnamed Human Rights Commission to prove they were not racist. Racism was defined as reporting in such a way as to make the government look bad. The press got the message and next time all lined up to endorse the ANC. There have been no such charges since then.
So it's lots of little things like this that call into question what is happening in South Africa and which makes news reports suspect. Why is it that no one is talking about how 5 million black voters are now staying away from the polls? What does it mean? The media doesn't address that question.
But they do have time to refer to the Democratic Party as a "predominantly white" party - as the Herald did today. In fact the claim is untrue. More clearly, it's impossible for it to be true. If every white in South Africa voted for the DP they'd receive around 5% of the vote. They got three times that in the poll. Is the Herald implying that all white voters went to the polls three times yesterday without anyone noticing?
Previous surveys of voting habits in past South African elections shows that most DP voters are not white. There are four main racial groups in South Africa. It's whites, blacks, coloured (those of mixed race) and Indians. The DP does have almost 100% support from whites while the ANC gets about 1% support. The majority of Indian voters now vote for the DP. A large percentage of coloured voters support the DP as well. About a third of them in fact. The rest are split between the ANC and the old National Party. The DP receives anywhere from 4% to 15% of the black vote depending on which area you are talking about. More DP voters are black than are white. The DP is the only party with multiracial support in South Africa but the Western media portrays the facts as opposite of this. Most ANC voters are black. It has a little coloured support, no white support and almost no Indian support. The old National Party today has support from coloured voters only. The Inkatha Freedom Party is restricted to support from black voters associated with the Zulu tribe. Of the main political parties only the DP has a vibrant mixture of support from across the board. And only the DP and ANC are national parties. The NP is now restricted to the coloured regions of the Cape and the IFP has support only in KwaZulu Natal.
But for some reason these facts never seem to make through the media filter.
All items in this journal reflect the personal opinions of the author and are not necessarily those of the Institute for Liberal Values or its Board members.
Previous (Iraqi Freedom is not an Operation. It's a state of mind.) - Next (The Quest for Perfection)
Nannies to Right of Us, Nannies to the Left of Us.
Welcome Home: the journeys of David Mamet and George McGovern.
Dominion Post in needless panic
Does Liberalism Have a Heart?
The moral problems of state power in regards to war.
Kiwi health: spend more, care less
Hurricanes and hot air: the sequel
Morality and Consistency: Why Left and Right both threaten freedom.
Ageing, population and the welfare state.
The bankruptcy of conservatism.
More journal entries...
|
Home - Books - Issues - Downloads - About Us - Journals - Thinkers - Links - Library - Subscriptions |
|
|
Institute for Liberal Values, Friday September 3rd 2010. |
|
|
|
