FEATURE

Like Twins Comparing Penis Sizes – As Seen On South Afrikan TV

Last week the Electoral Act was amended just in time to afford political parties an opportunity to advertise on television and the African National Congress was already out there casting its first stone of Friday. Given that the Act was only amended less than 36 hours before the ANC had its ad it simply suggests that it was shot long ago in anticipation of an eventuality. I smell dead fish here.

True to the ANC’s recent cult-status politics the old man on the ad was not really about shouting praises to Ikhongolose but Umsholozi (Jacob Zuma for you), the brand ambassador of the ANC. The ad didn’t touch on the absence of service delivery in many previously black areas of this country but on the one old actor who was applauding the useless local government public servants who everybody knows don’t know the meaning of delivery even though they used to be teachers; for a job well done.

I understand from well-placed sources that the Democratic Alliance’s advertisement was busy being edited and final touches added on it over the weekend and should be on the screens on Tuesday. I guess it will feature Madam Godzille (Helen Zille for you) walking down a murky street in some god-forsaken squatter camp and often dodging potholes and raw sewerage surrounded by famish-looking kids from the squatters in DA t-shirts. She will be telling us about an alternative to the ANC even though the buzzword some few months ago was READY TO GOVERN.

Then Congress of the People will have their own featuring the Doctoring Bishop or is it the Bishoping Doctor (Mvume Dandala for you) which I reckon will feature visuals of corvettes, submarines, fighter jets and artillery pieces and asking us whether we know how much was actually spent on purchases and on kickbacks to the ANC. Then the Bishop will plead with South Africans to uphold morality, fight corruption, nepotism and disproportionate dispensation of patronage as it has become the hallmark of the ANC. I reckon JJ Tabane and Sipho Mgwema are not stressing about this as all they need are archive material of the arms package and to book a studio.

I doubt if the Pan Africanist Congress and Pan African Movement will go the television route given their pockets of rural-based support. They might go for an ad with lots of sugar cane fields and a solitary tractor ploughing derelict arid land freshly acquired through Land Restitution. Then we might see women carrying their produce in large baskets and some yuppie picking a watermelon from ‘that farm’ at Fruit and Veg. their focus being on land first. But I reckon they should just do one ad, interchanging Thamie Ka Plaatjie for Letlapa Mphahlele, they can even use blue screen to superimpose bomAfrika. Because quite frankly to have them competing is like twins comparing the sizes of their penises.

Finally Socialist Party of Azania, Azanian People’s Organisation, Freedom Front+, Inkatha Freedom Party, Independent Democrats, Alliance of Free Democrats, United Democratic Movement, African Christian Democratic Party, Minority Front, United Christian Democratic Party, National Democratic Convention and a plethora of smaller parties can all do one ad and also interchange the leaders since television ads don’t come cheap. They make streetpole ads look like word of mouth.

PS. Hoping the ANC does not threaten advertising agencies which take the COPE account with sanction of government work. All the parties should have the carte blanche to choose an advertising agency of their choice and vise versa. Otherwise, the horses are galloping, it’s betting time.

WE’LL POST OUR OWN SHOT AND EDITED PARTY POLITICAL ADS ON www.umshiniwami.blogspot.com. Go and visit for fresh Mpumalanga generated content.