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JOURNAL OF AFRICAN ELECTIONS Volume 20 Number 1 June 2021 remember to change running heads VOLUME 17 NO 1 i Journal of African Elections EDITOR Denis Kadima ARTICLES BY Ronesh Dhawraj Danie du Plessis Charmaine du Plessis Harrison Adewale Idowu Joseph Hanlon Hangala Siachiwena Chris Saunders Rekai Rusinga Michael Kpessa-Whyte Maurice Taonezvi Vambe Christopher Simeon Awinia Volume 20 Number 1 June 2021 i ii JOURNAL OF AFRICAN ELECTIONS Published by EISA 14 Park Road, Richmond, Johannesburg, South Africa P O Box 740, Auckland Park, 2006, South Africa Tel: +27 (0) 11 381 6000 Fax: +27 (0) 11 482 6163 e-mail: [email protected] © EISA 2021 ISSN: 1609-4700 (Print) ISSN 2415-5837 (Online) v. 20 no. 1: 10.20940/jae/2021/v20i1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher Printed by: Corpnet, Johannesburg Cover photograph: Reproduced with the permission of the HAMILL GALLERY OF AFRICAN ART, BOSTON, MA, USA remember to change running heads VOLUME 17 NO 1 iii EDITOR Denis Kadima, EISA, Johannesburg MANAGING EDITOR Heather Acott EDITORIAL BOARD Chair: Denis Kadima, EISA, South Africa Cherrel Africa, Department of Political Studies, University of the Western Cape, South Africa Jørgen Elklit, Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark Amanda Gouws, Department of Political Science, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa Roukaya Kasenally, Department of Social Studies, University of Mauritius, Mauritius Abdul Rahman Lamin, UNESCO Regional Office for Eastern Africa, Nairobi, Kenya Tom Lodge, Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Limerick, Ireland Khabele Matlosa, Political Affairs Department, African Union Commission Roger Southall, Department of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa and Research Associate in Political Studies, University of Cape Town. The Journal of African Elections is an interdisciplinary biannual publication of research and writing in the human sciences, which seeks to promote a scholarly understanding of developments and change in Africa. Responsibility for opinions expressed and for the accuracy of facts published in papers, research notes, review articles and book reviews rests solely with the individual authors or reviewers. Contributions are referred to specialist readers for consideration, but the Editor is responsible for the final selection of the contents of the Journal. Editorial correspondence, including manuscripts for submission and books for review, should be sent to: The Managing Editor, Journal of African Elections EISA: P O Box 740 Auckland Park 2006, South Africa Tel: +27 (0) 11 381 6000 | Fax: +27 (0) 11 482 6163 | e-mail: [email protected] Business correspondence, including orders and remittances, subscription queries, advertise- ments, back numbers and offprints, should be addressed to the publisher: The Publications Department, Journal of African Elections EISA: P O Box 740 Auckland Park 2006 South Africa Tel: 27 (0) 11 381 6000 | Fax: +27 (0) 11 482 6163 | e-mail: [email protected] Abstracts for previous issues are available at: https://www.eisa.org/jae.php NB replace with new domain address no ZA email from Ilona 21 August 2020 iv JOURNAL OF AFRICAN ELECTIONS CONTENTS SOUTH AFRICA’S 2016 MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS How the ANC and DA leveraged Twitter to Capture the Urban Vote Ronesh Dhawraj, Danie du Plessis and Charmaine du Plessis .....................................1 BIOMETRIC TECHNOLOGIES AND THE PROSPECT OF SUSTAINABLE DEMOCRACY IN AFRICA Harrison Adewale Idowu .............................................................................................23 COLLAPSING ELECTORAL INTEGRITY IN MOZAMBIQUE Joseph Hanlon ..............................................................................................................44 ELECTIONS, LEGITIMACY, AND Democratic Consolidation IN SOUTHERN AFRICA Lessons from Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi Hangala Siachiwena and Chris Saunders ...................................................................67 ZIMBABWE’S 2018 HARMONISED ELECTIONS An Assessment of Credibility Rekai Rusinga ..............................................................................................................90 EXPLORING THE SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION OF INDEPENDENT SWING VOTERS IN GHANA Michael Kpessa-Whyte ............................................................................................... 115 VOTING RIGHTS OF ZIMBABWEANS IN THE DIASPORA Maurice Taonezvi Vambe ...........................................................................................137 SOCIAL MEDIA PENETRATION, PARTY POLITICS AND ELECTIONS IN TANZANIA Emerging Practices and Challenges Christopher Simeon Awinia ......................................................................................159 VOLUME 20 NO 1 DOI: 10.20940/JAE/2021/v20i1aDOI: 10.20940/JAE/2021/v20i1a1 1 1 SOUTH AFRICA’S 2016 MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS How the ANC and DA leveraged Twitter to Capture the Urban Vote Ronesh Dhawraj, Danie du Plessis and Charmaine du Plessis Ronesh Dhawraj is a specialist researcher in politics at the South African Broadcasting Corporation, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa Danie du Plessis is a professor, Department of Communication Science, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa Charmaine du Plessis is a professor, Department of Communication Science, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa ABSTRACT This paper focuses on how South Africa’s governing party, the African National Congress (ANC), and main opposition, the Democratic Alliance (DA), leveraged microblogging site Twitter. This was part of their urban election campaign arsenal in the 2016 local government elections (LGE) to promote party-political digital issue ownership within an urban context. Using each party’s corpus of 2016 election-related tweets and election manifestos, this three-phased grounded theory study found that each party used Twitter as a digital political communication platform to communicate their election campaigns. The DA notably leveraged the social networking site more for intense focused messaging of its negative campaign against the ANC while simultaneously promoting positive electoral messages around its own core issues and metro (urban) mayoral candidates. Furthermore, battleground metros were identified, narrow-cast and subsequently audience- segmented by the party in Ekurhuleni, Johannesburg, Tshwane (in Gauteng) and Nelson Mandela Bay (in the Eastern Cape). This led to an emphasised campaign to either activate the party’s own urban support base and/or to suppress the ANC’s turnout in these highly-contested areas. The results of this study further indicate that the ANC and DA both used Twitter to claim explicit and implicit digital party-political issue ownership in the 2016 LGE. Keywords: South Africa, electoral politics, grounded theory, digital issue ownership, political communication, social media, Twitter, urban electioneering 1 2 DOI: 10.20940/JAE/2021/v20i1a1 JOURNAL OF AFRICAN ELECTIONS INTRODUCTION South Africa holds elections for national, provincial and local government representatives every five years. While the country’s most recent general elections took place in May 2019, local councillors were last voted into office on 3 August 2016. The country’s sixth local government elections are scheduled to take place on Wednesday 27 October 2021. While there may have been a wealth of local government issues that occupied the public domain preceding the August 2016 poll, the dominant narrative for the election at the time was undoubtedly the battle for the urban vote and how residents in South Africa’s eight metropoles would vote. This was an election tailor-made for the DA, South Africa’s main oppo- sition party, considering that the party draws most of its support from urban constituencies. For this reason, DA national marketing director Aimee Franklin (2018) confirms that ‘battleground metros’ were identified in Gauteng (Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni) and the Eastern Cape (Nelson Mandela Bay) as early as the pre-campaigning phase. Vote-catching strategies were put in place and electoral messages ‘narrow-casted’ to ensure maximum ‘audience- segmentation’. For the DA, these battleground metros were singled out due to perceived ANC leadership and governance weaknesses there (Berkowitz 2016). Surveys by organisations such as IPSOS also primed the highly-charged 2016 electoral landscape, using fresh updates on just how close the urban race was for votes in the four ANC-led metros (IPSOS 2016a). Everatt (2017) observes that having Jacob Zuma as party president at the time did not do the ANC any favours. Despite his popularity in some provinces, Zuma was not well-liked in Gauteng’s urban areas, the three metropolitan municipalities. Opting to keep the scandal-prone president out of the urban centres, the ANC decided to use other urban-friendly leaders such as Kgalema Motlanthe to convey the ANC’s 2016 message. Part of the party’s media blitz in the metros was aimed specifically at the millions of middle-class black voters who had benefited from ANC pro-reformist policies since 1994 (Mantashe 2017, p. 14). However, opposition parties like the DA still capitalised on the ANC’s leadership deficit by consistently honing in on the ANC president to campaign negatively against the party. This focused onslaught against the