While rallies and branch meetings have traditionally been the staple of political campaigning in the African National Congress, the internet and particularly social media have created a new growing space for political engagement. As part of SABC News’ dateline Mangaung series, we look at the use of social media in the run up to the ANC’s National Conference. The virtual space, through platforms such as twitter and facebook, has increasingly become the rallying arena, particularly for the youth, ahead of the December conference. ANC Youth League member and founder of various facebook political campaign pages, Sibusiso Zonke says, “Social media is being used in politics to engage politically with the young people from other towns, provinces. Social media is dominated by the youth. My father doesn’t have facebook and our parents don’t know anything about facebook.” Various pages that pledge allegiance to different politicians and call on users to back their preferred leaders have come to the fore in the run-up to the conference. The page “In support of President Zuma for a second term” can be found in the same search as the “Anyone but Zuma” group. MD for Worldwide Worx Arthur Goldstruck says one needs to be critical of these forums. “It’s mainly noise, people expressing their preconceived notions of who should be President, who’s going to win etc. So what you see is support groups putting up and lobbying to like the support group.”
Analysts and youth both agree that the space is not being used effectively by the ANC
Some of the lobby-pages have over 20 000 likes. The attraction to these platforms seems to be the anonymity social media affords users. However, Goldstruck warns that anonymity does not always exist online. “You’re actually standing on a soapbox in public – anything you say in social media, it’s as if you’re standing on a stage and declaring it to a massive audience. If you not willing to declare it to a massive audience you shouldn’t declare it on social media,” added Goldstruck. Analysts and youth both agree that the space is not being used effectively by the ANC, however, the ruling party’s communication manager Keith Khoza differs. He says the party plans to expand its online presence. “The idea is as we go forward, this organisation will have a very strong social media component, that will enable us to have segmented messages. By the time we go to the 2014 elections, the ANC social media component would be the one mostly used in the ANC.” In the last few years, the world has watched more and more events unfold from their mobile phones. People followed the Arab Spring, Hurricane Sandy, as well as the US elections online and the ANC says it would be utilising these platforms more than ever at the Mangaung 2012 conference.
– By Hasina Gori
