Political radio and television advertisements in a young democracy: the 2009 South African national election campaign

• Published date: 01 August 2013
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1469
• Date: 01 August 2013
• Author: Lynnette Fourie

■Academic Paper

Political radio and television

advertisements in a young democracy: the

2009 South African national election

campaign

Lynnette Fourie*

Communication Studies, North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa

It is argued that political parties in a developing democracy should contribute to sustaining democracy through their

informational and motivational functions during election campaigns. Rather than debating the merit of issue mes-

sages, it is argued that cognitive and emotional campaign messages should be integrated, in order to not only attract

voters’attention but also to inform the voter, to foster democratic values, to stimulate debate and to motivate voters to

vote.

It was found that in the 2009 South African general election, South African political parties did not effectively

integrate emotional and cognitive messages, but references to democratic values were integrated with the emotional

messages. Few of the parties encouraged voters to participate in the election for the sake of sustaining the democracy.

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

The South African general elections of 2009 marked

14 years of democratic elections in South Africa.

This election was in many circles described as a

watershed election. It followed a volatile political

period in which Thabo Mbeki was replaced by

Jacob Zuma as leader of the African National

Congress (ANC) in December 2007. In September

2008, Mbeki was also relieved as president, and

Kgalema Motlanthe was appointed as acting presi-

dent. All these events contributed to the formation

of the Congress of the People (COPE), a breakaway

group of the ANC predominantly consisting of

Mbeki followers (Lemon, 2009:670). Although much

was made of the potential of COPE as an opposition

party and the ANC losing its two-third majority in

the run-up to the elections, the Democratic Alliance

(DA) remained the official opposition while the

ANC secured 65.9% of the votes. COPE emerged

as the third largest party, with 7.4% of the votes

(Lemon, 2009:672–673). Given the volatile political

context, South Africa’s fourth democratic general

elections went very smooth.

However, the successful conduct of free and fair

elections alone is not a guarantee for the consolida-

tion of democracy (see Bollen, 2009; Verkuilen,

2009). In this regard, some authors (see Bratton

and Chang, 2006; Bollen, 2009) have developed

measures for democracy. Bratton and Chang

(2006:1065–1066) identified political stability,

government effectiveness, regulatory quality, the

rule of law and control of corruption as indicators

of what they call stateness. Bollen (2009:370) refers

to a continuum of democracy to indicate the extent

to which political liberties and democratic rule are

being upheld in the country. The conclusion is that

democracy should not just be evaluated in terms

*Correspondence to: Lynnette Fourie, Communication Studies,

North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa.

E-mail: Lynnette.Fourie@nwu.ac.za

Journal of Public Affairs

Volume 13 Number 3 pp 298–307 (2013)

Published online 13 June 2013 in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.1469

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.