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A campaign ad by the opposition Democratic Alliance of South Africa featuring the burning national flag has laid bare the deep division gripping the country just three weeks before a crucial national election.
The 33-second ad, which first aired on Sunday, shows the burning paper flag while a voice-over warned that the ruling African National Congress would be forced into a post-election deal with two radical parties if it loses its majority on May 29 .
“Under this coalition of corruption, life is only getting worse. This election is about survival,” it said, referring to a possible pact with Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and former President Jacob Zuma’s MK party.
DA leader John Steenhuisen has defended the video as “the most successful political advertisement in our democratic history” and was viewed more than three million times in 48 hours.
But it has sparked a fierce backlash, with President Cyril Ramaphosa calling it a “treason”. Zizi Kodwa, the Minister of Arts, Sports and Culture, suggested that the prosecution should be taken to court for their “unpatriotic” act that “desecrated” a national symbol.
Thuli Madonsela, a respected lawyer who found Zuma had abused his time in office in her previous post as public protector, described the DA campaign as “ill-advised” for showing disrespect for “a symbol of triumph against apartheid”.
The flag, first flown on the day of the country’s first democratic election in 1994, in which Nelson Mandela was elected president, remains a powerful symbol among South Africans of the birth of the Rainbow Nation – a story that has continued in recent years Revelations of serious corruption marred the ruling party during Zuma’s tenure and crippling electricity shortages that have limited GDP growth to less than 1 percent.
The DA’s campaign has hit on a central issue of the election: who will the ANC form a coalition with if it is not expected to win 50 percent of the vote?
The DA had repeatedly warned of the likelihood of a “doomsday coalition” between the ANC, EFF and Zuma’s party, arguing that the ruling party would do “whatever it takes to stay in power”.
Almost all opinion polls suggest that the ANC will lose its majority. Some predict his support will fall as low as 37 percent. An Ipsos poll of 2,545 registered voters published two weeks ago showed just over 40 percent support for the ANC, about 22 percent for the DA, 11.5 percent for the EFF and 8.4 percent for the MK Party.
Helen Zille, DA leader, said the party had no intention of withdrawing from this election campaign. “We knew this reaction would come. We fully expected it and we did it,” she told the Financial Times in an interview.
She said Ramaphosa’s reaction was artificial outrage. “Cyril says this is treason. Now, what causes the health system to collapse? What destroys power generation capacity? What is destroying the railway infrastructure? This is treason – not burning a piece of paper to symbolize how the ANC does.”
Her party’s job was to think ahead and warn South Africans about the pitfalls of the country’s political choice. “When analysts wake up ten years later, they will present what we say today as new insights. But you can’t be wise after the event,” she said.
Ralph Mathekga, an independent political analyst, described the ad as a “very risky” political strategy. “Burning a flag is not part of normal political discourse in the run-up to an election. This is something you would expect at a protest instead, so it will be interesting to see how voters react,” he said.
Mathekga said the issues raised by the DA were not wrong, but they exposed the party to criticism that it longed for a country under a different flag to the one that embraced democracy and was intended to unite South Africans.
He also said a partnership between the ANC and one or both of Zuma and Malema’s parties was “unlikely”.
“I don’t think the ANC will work with Malema or Zuma at the national level in the near future. “I have the impression that they know that a partnership with the more radical parties will not bring them back to a majority of voters,” he said.