Introduction
South Africa's national election on 7 May 2014 saw the African National Congress (ANC) notch up another convincing victory. The party won nearly eleven and a half million votes, taking 62.15% of the total (Electoral Commission of South Africa 2014a). Its closest rival, the Democratic Alliance (DA), took a little over four million votes and 22.23% of the vote while the newly formed Economic Freedom Fighters of Julius Malema took 6.35%. The ANC's share of the vote fell by 3.75% while the DA's vote increased by 5.57%. For the DA this was a considerable success, having gained the support of 1.14 million new voters (Callard 2014). Some 750,000 of its voters are now black African and the party increased its share of the vote by 30% (Daily Maverick 2014b ).
Put another way, the ANC retained all the provinces, except the Western Cape, which the DA continued to control with an increased majority. The only real fly in the ointment for the ANC was in Gauteng, which includes Johannesburg. Here the ANC won 53.59% of the vote and the DA 30.78% (Electoral Commission of South Africa 2014c). For the ANC, which took 64.04% in 2009, this was a considerable blow, but the ANC could comfort itself that even if it had been unable to retake the Western Cape and found its support eroded in Gauteng, it still held the other major conurbation – Durban – (or eThekwini, as the metropolitan area is now called) with 64.59% of the vote.
The University of Cape Town academic and columnist Richard Callard provided this assessment:
If the elections offer us any single clear message, it is that the African National Congress (ANC) electoral brand remains almost as robust as ever and apparently resilient in the face of the numerous challenges it faced coming into the campaign: less united than before; unable to count on the unequivocal support of the union movement; a depleted ANC Youth League, post-Julius Malema; and with serious question marks about the probity of its leader.
(Callard 2014)
Although not entirely satisfactory for the party, the 2014 election was no mean achievement for the ANC, which manages to retain widespread popular support despite 20 years in office. The raft of allegations of corruption against the party and its leaders appeared to have fallen on deaf ears. President Jacob Zuma concluded that the government's expenditure of R246 million on upgrading the security around his home at Nkandla was ‘only an issue with the media and the opposition’ (Business Day 2014 ). Ordinary voters had little apparent concern that this money, spent in an area of high deprivation, included paying for a swimming pool, a kraal for his cattle, a private ‘amphitheatre’ and even a ‘tuck-shop’ for one of his wives to run. At the same time President Zuma's lack of appeal for some ANC supporters (particularly in Gauteng) resulted in his being booed on several occasions (Mail & Guardian 2014 ). This forced the party to abandon its practice of running strongly presidential campaigns, something it had relied on during previous elections (Butler 2009).
While there is some justification for this analysis, it fails to capture just how the ANC actually manages to hang on to its electoral support. While nowhere near as unfair as many other elections on the African continent, the South African political process is certainly not above criticism. From the evidence of the manner in which the election was conducted it is difficult to justify the conclusion of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Observation Mission that the election was almost without blemish, or as its preliminary report put it: ‘peaceful, free, fair, transparent and credible, reflecting the will of the people of South Africa’ (SADC 2014).
The ANC's election machine
Although the ANC, as a party, may seem dormant when there is no election to be fought it certainly conducts its election campaigns in an impressive fashion. Drawing on a legitimacy born out of a century of working for the rights of the African people, the party is capable of mobilising its core supporters across the country. While its support among the ethnic minorities may have declined and its leadership is no longer peppered with white, coloured and Indian faces, it continues to win the backing of the majority of the African population.
Anyone travelling beyond the white suburbs of Cape Town into the predominantly African suburb of Khayelitsha could not fail to be struck by the degree of ANC support. DA posters on the lamp posts were few and far between. On election day itself ANC T-shirts were ubiquitous in African areas, although the DA and other opposition parties also had supporters who wore their party's colours. In part this was because the ANC simply distributes more T-shirts than its opponents, as one report put it: ‘The African National Congress took its national election campaign to Botshabelo in the Free State on Sunday with ANC deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa conducting street visits. Ramaphosa left a trail of yellow T-shirts, walking down a street in L-section in Botshabelo, handing out shirts and greeting people’ (SAPA 2014).
This reflects the ANC's vast spending power. No official statements are provided by any of the parties about their election budgets, but unofficial estimates by the DA suggested that the ANC outspent its main rival four or five times. In part this is the result of the ANC's highly effective investment arm, Chancellor House, which channels funds into the party from government contracts.1 This diversion of public funds to fund the party has been repeatedly criticised. For example, in April 2014, on the eve of the election, it was revealed that the ANC had taken control of a supplier to the state electricity corporation, ESCOM (Witness 2014 ). Advocate Paul Hoffman, head of the Institute for Accountability in Southern Africa, described the deal as ‘illegal’ in terms of the Constitution. He warned that ‘this means money received from a state-owned entity will go straight into the coffers of the ANC … No other party has the temerity to enter into deals like this, where they are both [player and referee],’ said Hoffman.
The backing for the ANC is also the result of plain, old-fashioned, electioneering. During campaigns the party branches mobilise their supporters through house and street meetings in a manner that other parties appear unable to match. This has been augmented in the past by the active support of their allies in the trade unions belonging to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). Professor Anthony Butler pointed to the importance of these alliances in broadening the ANC's support base during previous elections (Butler 2007, 38). ‘The ANC's system of alliances allows diverse class and ideological interests to be represented.’
In recent months some of the unions, led by the largest – the metalworkers, NUMSA – have fallen out with the ANC. In December 2013 NUMSA announced that it would not be supporting the ANC during the May election (Mail & Guardian 2013 ). ‘NUMSA as an organisation will neither endorse nor support the ANC or any other political party in 2014,’ general secretary Irvin Jim told a news conference at the end of a meeting of its members. He said NUMSA officials or workers could campaign for the ANC but would have to do this ‘in their own time and using their own resources’. ‘It is clear that the working class cannot any longer see the ANC or the SACP [South African Communist Party] as its class allies in any meaningful sense,’ Jim said.
While NUMSA and some of its allies defected from the ANC camp, others did not. Most of the public sector unions, including the powerful South African Democratic Teachers Union, SADTU, campaigned for the party as they had done in previous elections. SADTU produced a booklet outlining just how this was to be done, with instructions to its members to do all they could to re-elect the ANC (SADTU 2014a). The teacher's union declared:
We call upon all our members to mobilize for a two-thirds majority election victory in order to consolidate the working class power and deepen our democracy. We commend the ANC for being the biggest and the oldest political movement in the continent. Long live ANC, Long Live!
(SADTU 2014b)
This relationship between the party and the unions has been extraordinarily important for the ANC in the past. It allowed the party to achieve a much higher rate of direct contact with the public than any other party, and helped explain its electoral success. As Wadim Schreiner and Robert Mattes argued: ‘In the 2004 and 2009 campaigns, it helped the ANC directly contact 22% and 19% of all voters, approximately twice as many as any other party (COPE (7%) and the DA (6% and 7% respectively) were its nearest competitors)’ (Schreiner and Mattes 2012).
A disenchanted electorate
Although some of its union allies may have deserted the ANC it still managed to win more than 60% of the vote. Most parties around the world would love to achieve such substantial support, but it is important to probe a little deeper if one is to understand just how this was achieved.
For a start there is the declining support for, and interest in, the electoral process itself. The Electoral Commission recorded voter turnout at 73.48% (Electoral Commission of South Africa 2014b). This was reported without comment, even by reputable international organisations like the BBC (BBC 2014). Yet the figure is misleading. As the South African Civil Society Information Service put it, the ANC's real electoral support has ‘declined precipitously’ from 53 to 36% (McKinley 2014). The report's author, Dale McKinley, calculated that the ANC's share of the eligible population (as opposed to the registered voting population) has fallen sharply since 1994:
1994: Of the 23 063 910 eligible voters, 85,53 percent (19 726 610) voted while the remaining 14,47 percent (3 337 300) stayed away. The ANC received support from 53,01 percent (12 237 655) of the eligible voting population …
2014: Of the 31 434 035 eligible voters, 59,34 percent (18 654 457) voted while the remaining 40,66 percent (12 779 578) stayed away. The ANC received support from 36,39 percent (11 436 921) of the eligible voting population. (McKinley 2014)
In other words, just over a third of eligible voters backed President Zuma and the governing party. McKinley went on to suggest that:
One of the main reasons why this ‘story’ is most often buried in the margins of our political and electoral conversations and consciousness is that the official version conveniently ignores primarily those citizens (a majority of whom are young people between the ages of 18–20) who have not registered to vote and secondarily, those who have registered but chosen not to vote … As a result, the official version of these latest national elections (in many cases, mirrored by the media) is one in which there is a ‘high voter turnout’ and where the ANC victory is presented as indicative of support from the ‘majority of voters’. And so it is that the almost 13 million who decided not to participate in the 2014 elections (whether registered or not) are effectively airbrushed from the picture, while the 11,5 million who voted for the ANC become ‘the people’. Stalin would be smiling approvingly.
(McKinley 2014)
Using and abusing state assets
This declining involvement of the electorate is sad but perhaps inevitable. There was never going to be another election like 1994 and no other president was going to be able to motivate an electorate like Nelson Mandela; so why the concern? Part of the answer was provided by an editorial in the Mail & Guardian:
A reason why the ANC has managed its gravity-defying levitation, despite disillusionment within the ranks and derision outside them, is the power of incumbency. The ANC holds the goodies bag and has no hesitation [doling] out taxpayer funded lollipops to keep the kiddies happily distracted …
At the most crass level, it has been the distribution of state funded food parcels, blankets and T-shirts at ANC political rallies. The DA is taking the ANC and the SA Social Security Agency to court to halt this ‘grotesque and continued abuse’ of taxpayer funds.
A variation on this theme are newspaper advertisements and roadside billboards paid for by government departments, such as those ostensibly lauding the service achievements of the Gauteng provincial government, but dressed in ANC colours and using minimally tweaked ANC slogans.
Such outrageous tactics, tried and tested by Zanu-PF in Zimbabwe, haven't raised as much as an eyebrow at the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC).
(Saunderson-Meyer 2014)
The ANC has displayed a ruthless disregard for the probity of office. It is a party that projects itself as the sole authentic representative of the entire people, rather than a mere political entity. As such it sees little need to distinguish between its interests and those of the nation as a whole. After all, President Zuma has suggested that the ANC should rule until the end of time – possibly until the second coming of Christ (Times Live 2009). It might be dismissed as soap-box hyperbole and mere hubris. This would be a mistake; it is an attitude that has bred a sense of entitlement and resulted in a blatant disregard for the boundaries between party and state resources. There is considerable evidence for this assertion.
On 7 April, with the election campaign well under way, the DA's leader, Helen Zille, held a press conference to highlight the issue (Zille 2014). She drew the media's attention to a range of abuses involving the use of government resources for party political advantage. Ms Zille described the government's ‘Fetsa Tlala’ (End Hunger) programme as is little more than a fig leaf for ANC election campaigning and political patronage. The programme, with a budget of nearly R2 billion, included the distribution of tens of thousands of Fetsa Tlala T-shirts to the public. The T-shirt, printed in ANC colours, had President Zuma's face on the front, against a backdrop of an ANC flag. On the back were the words ‘We have a good story to tell’ – the ANC election slogan. She also raised the hiring of dozens of giant advertising hoardings in Gauteng, along major highways. Again the adverts were in ANC colours and only slightly edited versions of the ANC's election slogans. The DA calculated that the 51 advertising billboards in Gauteng were displayed at a cost of over R2 million a month, paid for by the province, not the party. Photographs of the billboards and examples of the Fetsa Tlala T-shirts emblazoned with Jacob Zuma's face were provided to the media.
No one questioned the veracity of the allegations, but the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries put out a statement attacking the claims (DAFF 2014). Describing the statements as ‘appalling’ and an attempt to ‘besmirch the good food production campaign’ it declared: ‘In a country where over 13 million people are faced with hunger, it is disturbing to see a government food production initiative that is capable of ensuring a community that is able to feed itself, so vehemently opposed.’ This was a clear attempt to obfuscate the issue, since the DA was not criticising the government food distribution but rather its use for party political advantage.
The question that then arises is whether these tactics were efficacious. Hard evidence for this is, naturally, difficult to arrive at, but there are suggestions that they were. A survey by the University of Johannesburg's Centre for Social Development in Africa (CSDA) indicated that just under half of voters were not aware that the social grants that they received were theirs by right.
The centre's director, Leila Patel, said the finding was ‘worrying’ as it meant that these voters – 49% of the respondents – were not aware of their rights. The potential for political abuse is large, given that just under 16-million grant beneficiaries are receiving social grants amounting to R121bn this year. Agriculture MEC in KwaZulu-Natal, Meshack Radebe, for example, said in April that ‘those who receive grants and are voting for the opposition are stealing from government’. He said that those who voted for another party should ‘stay away from the grant’, as if social grants were gifts from the ruling party. In fact, these grants are funded by taxes in order for the government to meet its constitutional obligation to provide social protection. (Ensor 2014)
Summarising the study, Professor Yolanda Sadie described the role of social grants in deciding voter behaviour as important, even if it was not decisive. In this regard the legacy of voter identification of political parties as historically representing ‘black’ or ‘white’ sections of the population was not insubstantial:
… social grants can provide an incentive for people to vote for the ANC, since a large proportion of grant-holders who support the party do not think that ‘they will continue receiving the grant when a new party comes to power’.
A majority of respondents also agreed ‘that they would vote for a party that provides social grants’. Therefore, in a situation where one party has dominated the electoral scene for such a long time, and without having the experience of other parties being in power, it is difficult for voters to ‘know’ whether these benefits will continue under a different party in power – particularly if the official opposition has the legacy of being a ‘White’ party.
Social grants can therefore be effectively used as a campaign strategy of gaining (or retaining) support from grant-holders in particular. The study has also shown that it is unlikely that the majority of poor voters will be persuaded to vote for a particular party on the basis of receiving food parcels before elections. Nevertheless, more than a quarter of the respondents (with a higher proportion unemployed than employed), would vote for a party that provided food parcels before elections. The message therefore is that providing food parcels to the poor before elections together with presenting the distribution of social grants as a ‘party initiative’ can indeed influence the floating vote.
(Sadie 2014)
The combination of using state resources (via advertising hoardings, newspaper advertisements and food parcels at rallies) together with suggestions that grants and pensions might be at risk if a voter supports an opposition party would appear to be effective weapons in the ANC's armoury.
The role of the state broadcaster
The state broadcaster, the SABC, is the largest newsgathering organisation in the country, with three of the four national free-to-air TV stations, 18 regional and national radio stations. It also broadcasts in all South Africa's 11 official languages, plus Khoisan tongues !Xu and Khwe. It also has a long and sad history of being the tool of the ruling party. Although modelled on the BBC, the apartheid government used the SABC as a tool of propaganda.2 The ANC has followed in their footsteps. This unfortunate fact was reflected in an article by Anton Harber, former Editor of the Mail & Guardian and Professor of Journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand (Harber 2014). Entitled ‘South Africa: SABC Is Key Weapon in ANC's Arsenal’, Professor Harber concluded that the SABC was ‘one of the party's most potent weapons’ since it has a far larger audience than any other media. Broadcasting in all of South Africa's major languages, the SABC can reach the parts others simply cannot:
That is why the ANC has so much to say about the inadequacies of the print media, but is so silent on problems at the SABC, which can be relied on to block opposition adverts, play down Nkandla and pursue the ANC narrative. It is why it was prepared to lend R1.5bn to the SABC and give only a few million for the Media Development and Diversity Agency to support community media.
(Harber 2014)
This is not the first time that the ANC's use of the SABC has been highlighted. Susan Booysen suggests that the party has used the broadcaster to bolster its image in previous elections. ‘The ANC expertly uses the public broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), to feed supporting information, in particular in terms of government activities and statements by top government figures in the run-up to elections’ (Booysen 2011, 220).
Concerns about the SABC fall into two categories: bias and political advertising. The question of bias has been raised by many parties. For example, the Congress of the People (COPE) accused the chair of the SABC, Ellen Tshabalala, of encouraging an audience to vote for the ANC (Times Live 2014 ). ‘We have always suspected that the SABC has the ANC's back [sic], and our suspicions have now been confirmed without a shadow of doubt,’ the statement read. Similarly the Pan African Congress youth wing accused the SABC of being ‘the mouthpiece of the ANC’ (Pan Africanist Youth Congress 2014).
While this has been a widespread belief among the opposition it is not borne out by some recent research. Media Monitoring Africa, an independent NGO, published an interim assessment of the May 2014 election in which it concluded that the SABC coverage was fair and proportionate (Media Monitoring Africa 2014a). Analysing the scope and content of the reporting the report concluded that: ‘Our monitoring reveals that since the advent of democracy in South Africa, the majority of South African media have an exceptionally positive record in reporting elections in a fair manner, this includes the public broadcaster, the SABC’.
The opposition would no doubt question this conclusion, but it is certainly the case that while there may be some issues concerning the tone and content of some broadcasts, the SABC did a considerably better job than many of its counterparts in many neighbouring countries. In part this is because there has been resistance from among the SABC's own journalists to overt political interference. When Ellen Tshabalala apparently instructed her journalists not to film crowds attending opposition rallies and warned them that their mobile phones were being monitored they protested (City Press 2014 ). Editors are reported to have described ‘numerous instances of interference in their work’ and encouraged staff to resist such blatant intrusion into their journalism. They are reported to have extracted an undertaking from senior management that they would act in accordance with the public broadcasting mandate as set out in legislation and the SABC's published editorial policies.
More serious were the accusations of censorship against the SABC for its refusal to air (or ‘flight’ as South Africans say) the party political broadcasts of the opposition parties. The DA was most severely affected, but it was not alone. The Economic Freedom Fighters of Julius Malema complained of the same treatment (Valentine 2014). The DA's commercial was refused permission twice by the SABC. The broadcaster claimed that the advert might incite violence against the police, used false information and attacked another party. Media Monitoring Africa scrutinised the arguments, rebutting them all (Media Monitoring Africa 2014b). The issue became something of a cause célèbre in the media. One commentator erupted in anger, declaring: ‘Hlaudi’, (Hlaudi Motsoening, the SABC Chief Operating Officer) ‘play the damn commercial!’(Daily Maverick 2014a ). The SABC finally relented and broadcast the material, but considerable damage had already been done. In any election timing is critical and days were lost as the lawyers wrangled over the complaints. These incidents did little to enhance the SABC's reputation.
Violence
Politics in South Africa has a tragically bloody history. One only need recall the near civil war that prevailed between 1991 and 1994 to understand just how frequently political differences have been settled with violence. The recent strikes in the platinum sector have exhibited the same tendencies.
The SADC Electoral Observation Mission (SEOM) report noted some violence during the May 2014 election, but suggested that it was inconsequential.
SEOM observed that electoral campaigns were generally peaceful. Contesting parties demonstrated political tolerance and maturity. However, there were incidents of inflammatory statements made by some parties that were inconsistent with Section 99 of the Electoral Code of Conduct. SEOM also noted that there were sporadic incidents of violence and intimidation during campaigns in some provinces. Some of these incidents were related to service delivery protests and industrial actions.
(SADC 2014)
It is difficult to reconcile this bland and frankly complacent statement with a long and comprehensive report produced just before the election by another of South Africa's civil society organisations, the Community Agency for Social Enquiry (CASE) (Bruce 2014). The CASE report, entitled ‘Just singing and dancing? Intimidation and manipulation of voters and the electoral process in the build-up to the 2014 elections’, by David Bruce is a shocking indictment of what took place in the months preceding the election. The 102-page document is comprehensive and detailed, drawing on media reports as well as 24 in-depth interviews with political activists from across the political spectrum. The report is chilling in the manipulation and violence that it uncovers.
The CASE report highlights just how poverty renders so many people susceptible to political manipulation:
As this report shows, people's economic vulnerability is an important factor exploited by those involved in intimidation in South Africa. The reliance of people on government grants, or government employment programmes, may create hesitancy about the possible risks of being identified as a supporter of a party other than the ruling party.
(Bruce 2014, 24)
This point has been outlined above but CASE provided much greater detail concerning the range of measures used to convince the poor to support the ANC.
The report also went into considerable detail about the means of more overt measures the ANC adopted. These include everything from parking vans outside meetings with loudspeakers blaring to make discussion and debate impossible to straightforward attacks and beatings. All are in contravention of the Code of Conduct published by the Electoral Commission which expressly forbids any ‘language or act’ that provokes violence or results in the ‘intimidation of candidates, members of parties, representatives or supporters of parties or candidates or voters’ (RSA 1998).
A DA member in the Eastern Cape interviewed by CASE said that intimidation has been a regular occurrence:
All I can tell you is we encounter these on a weekly basis. From some intimidation, or a threatening demeanour at a house meeting in a ward in a municipality, where there's some DA people doing a house meeting, maybe showing a video or something. ANC people in the community will come and they will shout and scream and toyi-toyi outside the house, threaten the house owner that they'll come and burn the house down when we've left. That happens on a weekly basis.
(Bruce 2014, 32)
Even if there was no direct physical violence, the report frequently found threats and intimidation of political activists during campaigning:
Say for example you would go on a Saturday afternoon and we would conduct door-to-door visits and all of a sudden you would just see a big group of ANC supporters chasing you away and say ‘you do not belong in this community, go away’ and literally threatening our activists and toyi-toyiing and they would be threatened with their lives that they gonna kill you, and they would be doing signs like this [indicates throat cutting motion]. So it is literally threats you know that we will kill you if you don't go out of this community.
(Bruce 2014, 58)
The CASE report makes it clear that while the ANC is not the only party to engage in these crimes and misdemeanours it is the main perpetrator. As David Bruce concludes: ‘ … the research overwhelmingly pointed to the ANC as the primary source of intimidation in South Africa’ (Bruce 2014, 3).
Election day and the electoral commission
The chair of the Electoral Commission, Pansy Tlakula, made it plain that electioneering was forbidden on 7 May – the day of the election itself. ‘No political events can take place on voting day,’ she told reporters. ‘Campaigning finished at midnight last night’ (Citizen 2014 ). Having travelled around the townships surrounding Cape Town throughout election day it is clear that this ruling was extensively and openly flouted.
As the day drew to a close, cavalcades of cars, with loudspeakers blaring out party songs and supporters waving flags from the windows, could be seen touring up and down the streets. Outside polling stations crowds, some more than a hundred strong, dressed in party colours and waving ANC flags, could be seen dancing right next to the long lines of men and women waiting patiently to cast their votes. When this was drawn to the attention of the police and the representatives of the Electoral Commission at the stations they either shrugged their shoulders or said they did not have the resources to deal with these violations of the regulations.
The Electoral Commission appears to have little appetite for tackling these transgressions. The Commission also refused to intervene in other election related issues, including the bitter debate between the opposition parties and the SABC. There is a suspicion among the opposition that the Commission is less than equitable in its treatment of their parties or their members. This is reflected in the interviews undertaken for the CASE report, which suggested that the Commission was biased in favour of the ANC because of the partisan nature of the civil servants that it uses as its representatives at polling stations. This is the view of a member of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).
We are not happy as the IFP about the fact that IEC is using teachers as you know presiding officers, because teachers belong to SADTU, because SADTU is a strategic partner of the ANC. Each time there is going to be an election SADTU goes public to say that they are committed to ensuring that the ANC wins the elections. Now if you use such people to manage the processes of the elections then those processes are bound to actually attract question marks from other people.
(Bruce 2014, 89)
Another interviewee, this time from COPE, had this to say:
Remember most of them are civil servants and largely teachers, who are members of SADTU. With each election, SADTU declares its unwavering support for the ANC. Whilst he or she is employed by the IEC, to deliver impartial elections, on the other hand they've got a mandate from their trade union, which is an ally of the ANC, to deliver votes for the ANC.
(Bruce 2014, 90)
The Commission appears to take a narrow interpretation of its responsibilities, only acting to ensure that what happens directly within the polling stations and at the counting centres is free and fair. This, despite its mandate from the Constitution, which calls for the Electoral Commission to ‘manage’ the elections in accordance with national legislation and to ‘ensure that those elections are free and fair’ (RSA 1996, para. 190). It would not be impossible for the Commission to use this Constitutional requirement to act more robustly to ensure that the environment in which the elections take place is far more conducive to the unrestricted expression of the will of the people of South Africa – a right for which they fought so hard.
Conclusion
The 2014 election attracted little attention from the rest of the world. The African Union and Southern African nations sent observers; the European Union, in a break from past practice, did not. Reportage in the international media was slight and not very revealing. This is unfortunate since South Africa, for all its imperfections, remains one of the few real democracies in Africa. It is worrying that there is apparently such complacency when, as indicated above, there are real flaws in the democratic process. There is no doubt that the ANC would have won a substantial victory even if there had been an entirely clean election, but the election was flawed and should be recognised as such. As the CASE report concluded: ‘Though it is not necessarily a feature of life in all poorer communities the research in this report indicates that intimidation and other forms of manipulation are a systemic feature of political life in South Africa’ (Bruce 2014, 91).