READER LETTER | ANC has pulled best election campaign

The 2024 election this week is likened to the 1994 one as more people, especially the youth, are expected to go to the polls in numbers greater than recent elections in democratic SA.

According to political pundits, these elections will result in coalition governments, both nationally and in some provinces, being set up.

The ANC has been in power for the past 30 years, and for the very first time, it faces a threat of being relegated to the opposition benches, in the National Assembly and in Gauteng and KZN.

That said, a few days before the elections, opposition parties, including the DA, were invisible. In my area, I hardly saw opposition parties doing door-to-door, let alone seeing them wearing political parties' regalia, or talking to voters.

Mmusi Maimane's party Bosa used the DA elections strategy:  campaigning by telephone. I received a call from the party. It used a recorded message from Maimane. For me, it's impersonal and detached.

On the other hand, the ANC was on the ground, doing door-to-door. It also dispatched its senior leaders to campaign and engage with the masses. Its members were always wearing the party's bright yellow T-shirts and multicoloured windbreakers.

Last Friday, the ANC painted Kagiso, in Mogale City, yellow. Its current first deputy secretary-general Nomvula Mokonyane and Gauteng MEC for human settlement and infrastructure development, Lebogang Maile, led the campaign. Other local and regional ANC members were also there.

The governing party knows that the best form of campaigning for elections is to engage the masses on the ground. Yes, many voters are disgruntled with the ANC, but the party has made a great effort to talk and listen to them. That should count for something, more so, overall, the ANC has pulled the best campaign for these elections.

 - Thabile Mange, Mogale City