Are you a leader of tomorrow?

If you are a future leader, perhaps the DA Leadership Academy’s Young Leaders Programme is for you…

posted with vodpod
Apply online at www.youngleaders.org.za before 17 October.

Helen Zille sings “Never give up!” – which vodcasting platform do you prefer?

You’ve seen Jacob Zuma singing Awuleth’ uMshini Wami. Now you can watch Helen Zille singing along to the DA’s anti-crime campaign theme song, “Never give up!” Eat your heart out, JZ

We’ve uploaded the video to multiple Vodcasting platforms, and I’m interested to know which you prefer.

posted with vodpod

Video: Save Our Scorpions submissions to Parliament

The upshot of our ‘Save Our Scorpions’ viral campaign: 2000 written submissions and 98000 signatures on the various petitions (online, sms and hardcopy). Here’s a video clip of DA safety and security spokesperson Dianne Kohler Barnard handing them over at the Portfolio Committee on Safety and Security:

more about “Save Our Scorpions submissions to Par…“, posted with vodpod

As IOL reports, this follows a number of recent polls suggesting that support for the retention of the Scorpions is high.  

Who’s negative – the DA or the media?

There’s a contention that pops up in the media from time to time – usually on the editorial and opinion pages – that the Democratic Alliance is too negative – that it only criticises and never offers its own solutions. It is never presented as the central thesis of a substantiated argument (that would be difficult, I would argue); rather, it is almost always a throw-away line – a cliché even. But does it hold up to scrutiny?

Fortuitously, Mandy de Waal published an interview with Media Tenor SA CEO Wadim Schreiner on Thought Leader yesterday that provides excellent background for this post. Among other things, it looks at how the media’s agenda setting plays a role in how politicians and political parties (or any institution or personality, for that matter – Cape Judge President John Hlophe is another case in point) are represented and perceived.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) is certainly a straight-talking, no-nonsense, critical opposition, and unapologetic about it. It’s also what the overwhelming majority of our supporters, as well as a significant proportion of voters who don’t yet vote for the DA, want from us.

In market research we recently commissioned, voters were asked whether they thought the DA was too critical, not critical enough, or just about right. Only 32 % of black voters – the market in which the DA needs to gain support in order to grow – think the DA is too critical; 15 % think we are not critical enough; and 39 % think we get our criticism just about right (margin of error of 2%). Among white voters – the majority of the DA’s current support base – 58 % think the DA is not critical enough; a further 36 % think we get it just about right. Only 2 % think we are too critical.

But the DA is by no means only critical. It also offers analysis of the numerous challenges the state faces – the better to identify the root of problems – and proposes solutions to many of those problems. This is something that all voters – regardless of who they voted for, or intend to vote for – want from an opposition party.

What do you want to see on a political party’s website?

We’re reviewing the DA’s main website at the moment. It was built in 2003, and it’s long overdue for a revamp.

We’ve got what I think are some pretty cool ideas to make it fresh, interesting and entertaining – for example, we’ve picked up a few ideas from Barack Obama (although he probably spends more on his website and online presence than the DA’s entire annual operational budget) and the LibDems in the UK, among others.

But I’d love to get some input from users, web designers and online marketers about what they think would make an excellent party website. So I’ll keep our specific ideas to myself for the moment. I don’t want to influence or limit any innovative ideas that may be out there.

‘Save our Scorpions’ – a successful viral campaign

A few weeks ago, I wrote about citizen activism 2.0, highlighting two civil society initiatives taking their campaigns online – one on Eskom load shedding and the other on the Scorpions. I’ve already written about our new load shedding blog, but I wanted to provide an update on how we’ve joined the conversation about the dissolution of the Scorpions (rather than just starting our own).

The online petition to stop the government from disbanding the Scorpions was started by self-proclaimed concerned citizen Hugh Glenister.

His petition details included a quote from DA leader Helen Zille, which is great for the DA. However, after three weeks, he only had a handful of signatures. We had been in touch with Hugh to thank him for using the quote, and we then approached him to assist with marketing it, and last week we introduced a viral email into our network of contacts.