DA’s flag flambé: A horrible no-good ad for horrible no-good times

By Stephen Grootes

9 May 2024

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The Democratic Alliance advert depicting our national flag burning and then reassembled, was clearly designed to inspire intense emotions. In that, it succeeded. But a much bigger question may be why this advert was published in the first place and whether it will succeed in winning more votes for the party, which three weeks before the elections should be the primary reason for its existence. This follows a tradition of the DA using incendiary adverts in its attempts to define the driving issues of the election.

To view an image of our flag burning, no matter how it is depicted, inspires intense emotions. It hurts. Deeply, even if the burning process is reversed and the flag is seen as untouched at the end.

It provokes important questions, as in, why would someone want to do this, and could someone who would conceive of using such an advert for political gain really respect the idea, the concept, the aim, of South Africa at all?

President Cyril Ramaphosa suggested that it was “treasonous” to do this, while Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture Zizi Kodwa said he would take action because he had a duty to protect South Africa’s national flags and symbols.

There is some evidence that a majority agrees with him. But not everyone.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Elections 2024

Over the past few days, callers into SAfm have gone in many directions – this has not been a debate where you can guess the view from the name of the person speaking.

Qobi in Polokwane suggested the flag in flames represented the problems causing our country to burn, and that, “Who doesn’t know that all the things the DA says (are wrong with the country) are true?”

Teksio in Maluti-a-Phofung asked an important question, “Imagine if the EFF is the one who burnt the flag”.

Many others agreed with Kodwa that the flag should be protected.

Kodwa chose his words carefully, suggesting the action he would take would be to ask the Electoral Commission if this advert did cross the line. But he also appeared to advocate for some kind of legal protection for the flag.

Many countries in Europe, such as Spain, France and Germany all have laws punishing people for desecrating their flags. Britain does not, while in the US the issue of whether there should be a ban on burning that country’s flag has energised the right-wing since the Vietnam War.

Unfortunately, no matter the intentions of those who want legal protection for a flag, down this road lies absurdity.

Where does the offence to the flag start? With the burning of it? With burning an image of it? With using it in a satirical film? Using it in an advert? With Faf de Klerk’s underwear?

In Zimbabwe, when an activist took to displaying the flag as a sign of protest, displaying the flag was briefly made illegal.

And if burning our flag as a form of protest is wrong, would it be wrong for an American to burn their flag in protest against Donald Trump’s possible re-election?

All of this may spark hope in the DA that its advert provokes a series of debates that puts the ANC on the wrong side of the argument, that the party somehow oversteps.

No accident

The history of DA campaigns during previous elections shows that this advert is no accident.

As long ago as 2016, the leading opposition party released an advert that used the voice of Nelson Mandela. This caused outrage at the time, led by the ANC MP, Madiba’s grandson Mandla Madiba.

In 2021, just months after the violence that claimed at least 342 lives in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, the party again courted controversy.

It put up posters in Phoenix, the centre of the violence, that told residents “The ANC calls you racists. The DA calls you heroes”.

As Daily Maverick pointed out at the time, the intention of the DA was to stoke controversy. And the way to do this was through increasing divisions, not reducing them.

Unfortunately, this is often the point of modern politics.

Perhaps the best public description of politics as it is practised in strategic terms by the DA has come from the former DA strategist, Gareth van Onselen.

As he put in Business Live while responding to the launch of Rise Mzansi, “A good sign of an impactful political party, in terms of current affairs, is when other parties are forced to respond to you. That is how you lead debate”.

In other words, an election can be won or lost not by what is actually said on the campaign trail, but by what the election is about.

Our elections in the past have often been dominated by racial identity. Given that our society is defined by racialised inequality, this should be expected.

If the DA believes this election, too, will be dominated by race, then it may well have wanted to start that debate on its terms. And this advert may be part of that.

It should not be forgotten how often politicians have deliberately tried to change the story in the past.

In 2011 then ANC Youth League Leader Julius Malema led a march from Johannesburg to the city then known as Pretoria. In the process, he almost forced our society to debate what he called “Economic Justice”.

It was an inspired move (even as he bailed in Midrand and re-appeared in Pretoria, and then left the country the next morning) in that it changed the story at a stroke. – and without anyone claiming to be offended.

But, much of his career has been defined by comments deemed offensive to many people. This was all deliberate, he stirred up debates. He was taken to court, to the SA Human Rights Commission, to other authorities. And this is one of the roots of his success.

Chair of the DA’s Federal Council Helen Zille has now confirmed this is the DA strategy, writing: “We want to go to war against those who are destroying the dream that once united our nation. We want to save our Flag. Controversy helps drive our message.”

This then is the major point, the aim of this is surely to drive turnout.

Tight election

And, as offensive as this advert may be, the situation ahead of this election could be so tight in some places that just a small percentage one way or another could make a difference.

Consider, for example, the situation in KwaZulu-Natal.

Polling there suggests that four parties could each get around 20% of the vote (the ANC, the IFP, MK and the DA). At the same time, in the suburbs of Ethekwini, residents have displayed intense anger at the quality of services they are receiving.

Whether these people turn out to vote for the DA could literally tip the balance between whether or not that party is in government in KZN after the elections.

This is designed to remind them that their country is burning. And, crucially, that it can be fixed.

The obvious message is that “only the DA” can fix it.

None of this means the DA’s actions here are moral. It is surely offensive and immoral to depict our flag as burning. And to be deliberately offensive, to deliberately cause people emotional pain is always going to be difficult to justify.

However, other parties too have indulged in immoral behaviour.

The EFF has continually baited people with racial divisions, PA leader Gayton McKenzie regularly professes his hatred for foreigners, others support an uninterrupted gusher of lies.

Even Ramaphosa has some history here.

In 2013 he was reported to have said, “If all South Africans don’t vote, we will regress. The Boers will come back to control us.”

More recently, he has suggested that people should vote for the ANC to protect their social grants. This is simply untrue as several other parties, including the EFF, Action SA, the DA and others all propose protecting, or even increasing, social grants.

Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande said in 2015 that the media is a “continuation of the apartheid regime” while “The DA will bring back apartheid”.

All of this shows that while the DA’s advert is offensive, it is also part of a particular type of politics. A politics that thrives on deliberate division and offence, and never more so than during an election.

Or, as Van Onselen put it in his description, “Nice guys tend to finish last … SA is a street fight”. DM

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No accident

Tight election