Crafting Dominance: Political Power and the Marketing of the African National Congress

† This article summarizes two earlier pieces of work on the same topic, namely a doctoral thesis and book titled A Kind of Magic: The Political Marketing of the ANC (Jacana 2013), by this author. While the article advances and extends the conceptual framework in which to understand the ANC's discursive base of power, it presents data from these two earlier publications. References are given to the original documents and not to the earlier previous pieces of work, unless necessary.

Abstract

Recent analyses of the continued dominance of the African National Congress (ANC) have centred on its organizational, electoral, governmental and popular bases of power. This paper extends this analysis by arguing that the ANC derives significant political power through its political communications, and particularly its political marketing. Through the lens of the latter, it examines the ANC's strategic political behaviour over time. It extends its analytical purview beyond election campaigns to include the process of creating the symbolic bases of the South African state through the discursive continuity of economic policy. This paper roots the ANC's political marketing within a wider historical, cultural, representational and political setting. It demonstrates the recursive practices and effects of the ANC's communications and the deep entanglement of politics with marketing. This paper makes an initial contribution to reconceptualizing the bases of the ANC's political dominance and sheds light on an understudied aspect of its political and cultural orientation.

ORCID

Rushil Ranchod http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8187-5137

Notes

† This article summarizes two earlier pieces of work on the same topic, namely a doctoral thesis and book titled A Kind of Magic: The Political Marketing of the ANC (Jacana 2013), by this author. While the article advances and extends the conceptual framework in which to understand the ANC's discursive base of power, it presents data from these two earlier publications. References are given to the original documents and not to the earlier previous pieces of work, unless necessary.

1. In a nod to its later, and perhaps more ‘neutral’ role, the name was changed to the Department of Information and Publicity.

2. While there was variability in the nature and use of these platforms, this conclusion is from the author's own observance of the use of these platforms during the campaign. Facebook, for example, provided a useful space for visitors to see campaign activities in different locations through images. Question and answer interactions on Twitter between senior ANC leaders and the public lacked depth and provided an opportunity to sloganeer off the party manifesto. The inadequate use of social media usage was again evidence in the 2014 campaign.

3. The issue is clouded. Trevor Manuel has noted that the Alliance leadership were aware of the content that there had been a measure of engagement on the document (see Gevisser 2007, 665).