Herron says social media now decides Cape Town wards as November poll nears

Cape Town’s November local government elections will be fought as much on a phone screen as on a street corner, the GOOD Party’s mayoral candidate for the city said this week, and the parties are still working out what that means for the people who end up in council chambers.

Brett Herron told IOL that elections are increasingly contested in the digital space, that the digital space cannot be ignored, and that social media has changed both how politicians engage with communities and how voters see them. As IOL reported on 17 September, he also rejected the suggestion that his party goes looking for online personalities to put on its lists.

His remarks land in a campaign season where the trend has become visible. Cedric Laguma, who runs the popular Facebook page Uncle Cedric’s House, is contesting Ward 111 as a Democratic Alliance candidate. The Patriotic Movement of Cape Town has named Ready D, the DJ, broadcaster and founding member of Prophets of da City, whose real name is Deon Daniels, as its mayoral candidate, and Bradley Bruintjies, known on the Cape Flats as Die Hoender Man, as a ward councillor candidate.

What a ward councillor actually does

The scrutiny that follows is fair, because the job is not a broadcast. A ward councillor sits on a municipal council that sets property rates, approves a budget that runs into tens of billions of rand, signs off on service delivery plans and answers for water, electricity, refuse collection and planning approvals in a defined area. In Cape Town that council also oversees the metro police, informal trading bylaws and the city’s housing pipeline.

A large following does not shorten the learning curve on any of it. A councillor who cannot read a budget vote or follow a council report will be outmatched in the committee room, whatever the size of the audience back home.

That is the substance behind Herron’s answer. He said the criticism of parties that chase followers is entirely valid, and that the GOOD Party has not gone out looking for social media influencers. Where a content creator stands for the party, he said, that person approached the party, made themselves available, and went through the same process as every other candidate, including the same training to equip them to serve the people who elect them.

The rulebook has not caught up

South Africa’s electoral law was not written for this. The Electoral Commission registers parties and candidates and polices campaign financing and the use of public funds, but a candidate’s following on TikTok, Facebook or Instagram sits outside the framework. Nothing in the Local Government: Municipal Electoral Act requires a party to disclose why it selected a candidate, and no rule bars a party from choosing one because of an audience.

There is also a live question about paid digital campaigning. Parties may buy advertising, and platforms carry their own disclosure rules, but South African voters have no single register showing who paid for a political advertisement they see on a feed. That gap is not of Herron’s making and he was not asked about it. It is simply the ground the November poll will be fought on.

Herron’s own caveat is the part worth holding onto. He said how candidates conduct themselves on social media is equally important to the party, because that conduct could damage the party, the campaign and the candidate. A councillor’s posts are not private once they hold office. Remarks that would be challenged in a council meeting are read by residents as the position of the person who represents them.

What voters will notice

For a resident of Mitchells Plain, Khayelitsha or Atlantis, the practical test is not the follower count. It is whether the councillor answers a call about a blocked drain, attends the ward committee meeting, and votes on the budget in a way that can be explained afterwards.

Where the digital shift does help is reach. A candidate who can speak directly to thousands of residents bypasses the rally and the pamphlet, and residents who would never attend a public meeting can put a question to a candidate in a comment. That is a real gain for accountability, provided the candidate answers.

The Independent Electoral Commission will publish the final candidate lists and the election timetable ahead of the November poll, and voters in each ward will be able to see exactly who is on the ballot. That list, not the timeline, is where this argument gets settled.