Update - April

Since the last posting, I have come across these two bits of relevant information:

* After a storm in a teacup, when a knock-&-drop paper called the Rising Sun relayed pro-ANC propaganda trying to depict Abahlali Basemjondolo (shack dwellers) as outsider-manipulated because they wore EcoPeace T-shirts while marching just before the election, His Excellency Ex-Councillor The Honourable Alan Murphy, Esq., C.E.O.-For-Life and Scourge of City Managers and Speakers, made a public statement explaining that although EcoPeace did supply some shirts, it was in terms of its election promises whereby councillor salary is used for community projects.
(By the same logic, we can conclude that the hundreds of EcoPeace posters which appeared before the election, calling for Free Water, Free Electricity, No More Cut-Offs, etc., were actually intended to alleviate climate change, since most were considerately close to shack settlements where they could be used to insulate imijondolo, cutting energy use and therefore greenhouse gas emissions. Even the drinks and snacks EcoPeace offered to media representatives at the KZNSA were no doubt nothing to do with the election, but a noble scheme to promote organic food production.)

* Reliable informants confirm that EcoPeace did engage an "election campaign consultant", but could not indicate whether the R20 000-a-year or the R350-an-hour option, or some other deal, was chosen - nor whether there was a "money-back-if-you-lose" clause. Unless perhaps it was all a way of channelling funds to community projects in Palestine.

On a more serious note, the whole sorry tale illustrates the hazards of the populist arena. Forgetting that the key constituency which enabled EcoPeace to win a seat in 2000 was the sophisticated voter (i.e. those who because of their critique of our quasi/psuedo-democracy would otherwise probably not have voted) the rump which remained of EcoPeace in the 2005/6 went for downmarket "impulse shoppers" - with slogans like those above, and yet no credible chance of influencing the relevant policies. Talk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.