Comments on: State of South African political websites

By: lebogang nkoane

lebogang nkoane — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 01:19:04 +0000

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

By: Santiago TazÃ³n

Santiago TazÃ³n — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 20:33:40 +0000

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?

By: Ian

Ian — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 00:29:10 +0000

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…

By: coda

coda — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 13:21:53 +0000

Hi Mal – please let the administrator know, and if he needs to he can contact me.

By: DA mal

DA mal — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 11:52:20 +0000

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

By: db cooper

db cooper — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 11:32:26 +0000

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…

By: coda

coda — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 21:23:51 +0000

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.

By: nrgza

nrgza — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 14:31:54 +0000

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 :)

By: Paul Watson

Paul Watson — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 13:20:21 +0000

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.

By: Ge*ff

Ge*ff — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 11:42:51 +0000

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.