Patrick Cull on Monday

ANC showing no wish to engage the opposition in debate

IT has been a rather strange election campaign to date. Certainly the customary posters are decorating the streets, and the Independent Electoral Commission is meeting the deadlines it has set and is now engaged in registering prisoners following the Constitutional Court decision.

But apart from the occasional brief crossing of swords, there has been no serious engagement involving the major parties.

One reason for this is that the ANC has obviously decided that it will not respond to statements being issued by the DA unless it is in terms of a strictly government matter such as political asylum for Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide or to be flippant, as was the case with the DA call for a televised debate between President Thabo Mbeki and DA leader Tony Leon.

In a sense it is rather like a boxing match in which one of the pugilists simply refuses to engage.

That the DA wants to is clear from the fact that it has done so with both the NNP and ACDP, accusing NNP leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk of running a “racist” campaign and telling voters not to support the ACDP and other smaller political entities because they will split the vote.

We also witnessed the spat when Mr Leon declared that he personally supported the death penalty in extreme circumstances, although the party’s official stance is that it is a matter of conscience and therefore left to individual members to decide whether they support judicial executions or not.

The fact that Mr Leon mentioned that a significant majority of the DA caucus supports the death penalty probably indicates the extent of the representation of former members of the National Party and other pro-hanging parties.

Theoretically in a proportional representation system you cannot split the vote, but the DA is right when it contends that in practice if the ACDP is inconsistent in its opposition to the ANC, as it has been, then a vote for that party will “weaken” the opposition, if not in numbers, certainly in terms of the commitment to oppose.

And one presumes the Independent Democrats would fall into the same category as its leader, Patricia de Lille, has also made it clear that she will not oppose the ANC simply for the sake of doing so.

Just how consistent this is when the DA’s major partner, the IFP, often votes with the ruling party and further serves in the national cabinet and is, therefore, party to and jointly responsible for cabinet decisions, is decidedly questionable.

(One interesting fact to have emerged this week came in a statement issued by DA chief whip Douglas Gibson, who said the DA and its partners, the major one being the IFP, aimed to get between 27 and 30 per cent of the vote or between 108 and 120 seats.

Given that the IFP can be expected to win some seven or eight per cent of the vote, or 28 to 32 seats – it currently has 31 – this means the DA has scaled down its predictions as to the number of seats it will win from more than 100 to between 80 and 90.)

The fact that the major protagonists in the election are not engaging in verbal combat, does not mean there is not a veritable hive of activity on the ground.

Both the ANC and DA are working feverishly and both leaders have been campaigning visibly across the country.

Both are scheduled to be in the Eastern Cape at the end of the month and Mr Leon will also be in the hinterland next week along with the DA’s “battle bus”.

In addition, IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi has been addressing a host of meetings in KwaZulu Natal.

But whatever thunderbolts are delivered at meetings and in walkabouts are not being responded to by the ANC and it appears they are not going to be over the next 30 days leading up to the April 14 election.

From an ANC perspective, there is really no reason why it should engage. Would the party really have stood to benefit in any way if it agreed to a televised debate with Mr Leon?

The answer is an unequivocal “No”. The DA, on the other hand, could well have benefited because of the recognition it would have been afforded and because a sizeable bulk of its supporters own a television set.

Many of the issues being raised by the DA are also of little significance to the bulk of ANC supporters, however important they may be in national terms.

The arms deal falls into this category as does whether capital gains tax hinders black economic empowerment. Is there any real purpose in the ANC, specifically its president, engaging the DA on these issues in the middle of the election campaign? Once again the answer is an unequivocal “No”.

It is also true to say that the ANC is in no danger of losing this election and the focus is on the margin of victory; the extent to which the “coalition for change” – in the main the DA and IFP – can make good on its boast to capture 27 to 30 per cent of the vote, and the results in the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, the latter being the province where the IFP’s real interest lies.

In addition, the focus will on areas such as how the Independent Democrats fare; whether the ACDP is able to maintain the growth it has experienced since 1994 and the PAC, that has been wracked by internal wrangling almost since 1999.

Despite the activity on the ground, with 30 days to go, the 2004 election may well go down in history as one of the quietest campaigns, a fact that many people might well rather relish.

---