On the Campaign Trail

25 March, 2009

Duduzile, who shot to fame in 2006 when she testified in her father's defence when he faced charges of rape - Zuma was acquitted - this weekend joined ANC Youth League president Julius Malema in speaking at a party rally in Plettenberg Bay at the weekend.

E-voting a Distant Reality

17 March, 2009

According to the IEC, electronic voting is too costly and the absence of paper records in voting and verification systems would result in a complete loss of hundreds or thousands of votes. It says that until it could be verified that e-voting machines are recording votes as intended, and election officials could conduct recounts, SA could not implement electronic voting.

17 March, 2009

The Congress of the People (Cope) on Monday hastily promised to remove from its website so-called "press releases" which were in fact Sapa wire service news reports. The Sapa copy had been plagiarised and edited to reflect Cope's election campaign activities in a positive light. The party reacted within minutes of a lunchtime call from Sapa to lodge a complaint and demand that the illicit content be removed immediately.

12 March, 2009

Political parties gathered at Gallagher estates, Johannesburg, to sign a pledge committing themselves to a peaceful elections campaigning and elections in South Africa. This pledge comes after incidents of violence between opposing political parties, where some political supporters were killed. The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) appealed to political parties to be tolerant and respect each other. The pledge was signed at the time when all political parties were hot on the campaign trail and some took the opportunity to campaign and made use of the platform to lash out at their oppositions.

Democratic Alliance

3 March, 2009

The Democratic Alliance seems to have been able to make better use of technology and social networking tools for their campaign. They have launched their comprehensive digital strategy with online tools such as blogs, facebook groups and twitter. This new form of electioneering using technology allows a way to directly engage with the electorate and DA took it a step further and made use of communicating their policies in IsiZulu.