President, Preacher and Populist: ANC, DA and EFF Leader Posters of the 2019 South African Elections

ABSTRACT

This article presents the findings of an analysis on a sample of three 2019 South African election posters. Posters that feature the party leader from the ruling African National Congress (ANC), the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) and the “largest of the small parties” the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) are analysed to provide insight into the manner in which the posters are designed to appeal to the voting public through the design of their textual and visual elements. The elements analysed are the representation of the leader, the party logos and colours used, as well as the textual content and fonts selected for each poster. The interpretation is supported by positioning the elements within their historical and cultural bases and referencing political communication research. The analysis finds that while the choice to foreground the party leader on the posters is similar between the three parties, their posters also show significant differences with regard to the size and positioning of each leaders’ image, their nonverbal cues and clothing. Such differences, coupled with differences in the use of colour, logo design and the choice of typography and slogans results in three distinct identities which I have named President, Preacher and Populist.

KEYWORDS:

• Election poster
• election campaign
• political party
• South Africa
• political communication

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 By 2016 Zuma had become such a liability for the party that the ANC’s posters calling on voters to register for the local election, for the first time since 1994, did not have an image of the party leader (Von Memerty 2016).

2 Dumitrescu (2011, 949) defines “major parties” as “the two parties with most seats in the three previous national elections.”

3 Niche parties within the western European context include greens, communists, and extreme-right parties (Dumitrescu 2010, 25). Lagardien (2018) defines South African small parties as those in Parliament that received less than 10 per cent of the vote during the previous general election and I therefore use “niche” and “small” parties interchangeably for the South African context.