State of South African political websites
With the 2006 Municipal Elections coming up soon (Election Day is March 1st), I found myself visiting a number of election-related and individual political party websites, firstly to find out if I still have time to register (oops, missed it by a day!), and then just out of interest.
South Africa has a vibrant multiparty political system, with 16 parties represented in parliament, and 120 parties registered with the IEC - 86 at national level and 34 at municipal level. The ANC is the majority party in the National Assembly and controls eight of the country's nine provinces. Following the ANC rated by number of seats in the National Assembly, the major opposition parties include: DA, IFP, UDM and ID.
Their websites are all really awful, particularly that of the IEC itself which completely falls apart in Firefox. In IE and Opera, it's (aesthetically) decent enough although lacking in many other areas.
The African National Congress' website is a mess. It's clearly been added to over the years without any consideration for IA and design consistency. And that yellow - cringe.
Democratic Alliance is a little better, although their security is shocking. After noticing their URI cruft - www.da.org.za/DA/Site/Eng/DEFAULT.asp - I took a chance and replaced everything from "Site" onwards with "admin". It worked. I then proceeded to login to their Content Manager using the very first username/password pair that came to mind...! (developers think alike). I didn't change anything of course, but given the ease with which I could have, they deserve to have their content tortured.
UPDATE: They've patched the security hole. For the record, the username/password pair I used was: test/test.
Inkatha Freedom Party is built with frames. 'Nuff said.
Independent Democrats: "SITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION, Please call back shortly".
And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, take a look at United Democratic Movement. It's as if their only goal was to take all the negatives of the other sites and combine them into one. And apparently the ANC is starting to implode. Haha.
Politics, ugh!
- leave a comment
14 Comments
It’s a secret.
that’s real weird, i spent yesterday looking at governmental type websites, just trying to get some info, on who to contact for specific things. i managed to get the info i was looking for but who on earth knows what type of files they’re uploading to their website?
Yeah these are crap sites – agreed… but then again so is politics… CRAP! Oh, try and get your hands on the IEC registration campaign ads (done by TBWA). It’s brilliant. Mofaya!
Shit that’s impressive. The IEC site crashed firefox and prevented me from accessing anything else.
Love the UDM site. Those circular grainy resized image things on the front page, pure revolutionary genius! I bet that trend is going to catch on faster than shack fire insurance.
And oh dear, this ex-pat just tried to visit the sites and was blocked by the corporate firewall. Apparently political sites are not to be perused during worktime.
Ugh indeed! Politics can get pretty ugly (geddit? pretty / ugly? hellooooo?)
ID’s site is up again – not bad; I remember that when I interviewed Patricia de Lille (ahem, self-important tone) she was lovely, fiesty, passionate, hopeful. She’d also just had a makeover and the hair was looking fabulous, dahling.
LOL @ ‘that yellow’ – I agree, minging, but it’s only their ‘corporate identity’ of sorts since the party first started, doubt they’re going to see the ‘cringe’ remark and change it now :)
What does “Mofaya” mean?
I like the ID, there is a definite need for more women in higher places. Err, sometimes. Yes appears their site is back up, and is a Stonewall production. MySQL errors aplenty. Operator logo downloads – sweeet! And a blank blog. I guess that’s at least a sign that they’re devoting their energy to things like… building houses and shearing sheep, eh.
I wouldn’t expect either ANC or UDM to change or remove the yellow, a little toning down would help though.
Hmmm, am I just being daft, or have they fixed the security hole already? If so, they’re more on the ball than you thought :-) OK, or you told them…
Hi Coda – thanks; did you tell the DA guys? I’ve tried all the developer-think-alike username password combos I can think of and none of them work now (maybe I’m not that good a developer!).
Otherwise I’ll raise it (angrily) with the administrator.
Thanks for pointing it out.
Mal
Hi Mal – please let the administrator know, and if he needs to he can contact me.
ITweb did a review of the political parties websites before the national election (http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/specialfocus/laing040408.asp?S=IT%20in%20Government&A=ITG&O=FRGN) – things haven’t got better it seems. I checked the ID’s site a few days ago and it hadn’t been updated since shortly after that election, so it looks like you caught them during an update, as at least now they have information from this year. They have one of the better sites (or it would be without the MySQL errors, still there, 5 days after you pointed them out), which sadly isn’t saying much. Instead of blowing a fortune on posters that blow away in a week, you’d think the parties could develop decent websites…
First of all congratulations for your blog. The contents are very interesting and your design is outstanding.
About this post I want to comment your sentence: “South Africa has a vibrant multiparty political system, with 16 parties represented in parliament, and 120 parties registered with the IEC”.
The figures are true, of course, but … Are you considering South Africa as “vibrant multiparty” with a dominant party (ANC) controlling 70% of the Parliament?
Hey.
This might be late, but uhmm, I was wondering,,,
If you looked a the political climate of South Africa, polictics are everywhere, every day, week, month, year,,, we get hear/read/see something about them. So one, gets to know what each party stands for or claims to stand for before elections come up right? Okay, let me get to my point now, before I loose you…
i don’t think political parties, at least the big ones, need to advertise. I don’t think I would vote for the DA because they had a convincing compaign or good website. Why? Well advertising can sell OMO, but I don’t think you can convince 75% of the population to vote for you by putting up posters and ‘cooking’ a tight website? Our politics are entrenched in our history,,,
I also think voting in South Africa is historically based, you either voting to maintain a certain ‘de facto’ or trying to introduce another. This might be harsh, but the ANC will always win on this premise. The ANC has to enslave and possibly eliminate a lot of black people for it to loose ground,,, before I get lost,,, let me sum it up,,,
web access is limited to mostly what the DA might be targeting, advertsing is limited to who are not decided, in which case they are few,,, i mean, hell would you vote for a party because they said, ‘a better life for all’? or a party that said ‘we deliver’?,,, unless of course if these parties believe we are that stupid, but then again, I am not voting,,, ‘floor crossing is un-constitutional”
in closing, ‘the puppet on the left or the puppet or the right?’ – a line from waking life, just before the guy set himself on fire, and ends his speech by saying, ‘let my own lack of a voice be heard.’
q.e.d
Leave a Comment
Your e-mail address is required, but will not be published.
11 January 2006
Me02:55 am
So what was the username and password for the DA website?