BARNEY MTHOMBOTHI: Posters on poles and poster boys for polls: SA’s flawed electoral farce
Extract
A spelling blunder on a huge ANC billboard bearing President Cyril Ramaphosa’s ever-smiling face in Port Elizabeth provided light relief in what has been a dismal and boring election campaign.
The amusement at the ANC’s expense must have stung because, in an effort to correct the error, the party issued a statement. Unfortunately, it too was riddled with grammatical and spelling mistakes.
“We will continue to work hard and make strides in gunnering [sic] support for the ANC,” it thundered. Maybe somebody was thinking about guns. It was certainly fighting talk.
Then there’s the picture that’s been titillating people on social media — a nattily attired Jeff Radebe awkwardly posing with a young voter who seems unimpressed with the T-shirt he’s just received. The optics, as they say, are not good. There’s no eye contact between the two. There’s Radebe, arms akimbo, looking almost ill at ease, in front of a skeletal mud hut that seems as though it would have long keeled over but for the two poles buttressing it. Jeff seems from another world. Everything around him is alien. Maybe he should be commended for going the extra mile in search of a vote, but the picture tells a less-flattering story than the one intended. But such thrills are few and far between. Apart from the fire and brimstone on the ground by protesters seeking to attract the attention of vote-hungry politicians, the campaign has been pretty dull. The same photos of party leaders hang on every pole and every tree in every village and suburb: Ramaphosa with his plastic smile (say ...
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