Cape Town - With municipal election season coming to a close soon, political parties and candidates reveal the costs and impacts of their election material, particularly election posters, as well as the City’s rules for displaying election posters during and after elections.
City spokesperson Luthando Tyhalibongo shed some light on the City of Cape Town's rules and regulations for candidates and parties regarding election posters in the various Wards.
Tyhalibongo said posters were only allowed on street lamp poles and may not be affixed to traffic signal poles, electrical or service boxes, poles with road traffic signs, or any other street furniture such as walls, fences, trees, rocks or natural features.
“Political parties are allowed one election poster per party per street light pole and one additional event poster per party, per street light pole,” said Tyhalibongo.
Tyhalibongo said posters may be erected 11 weeks before the election but must be removed 10 days thereafter along with any string or plastic fasteners used.
He said posters that are not removed within this deadline would be removed by the City at the political party’s cost of R128 per poster.
GOOD mayoral candidate Brett Herron said they printed two types posters for their party, featuring leader Patricia De Lille and mayoral candidate posters which were distributed in each of the towns and cities where they nominated mayoral candidates.
Herron said they printed tens of thousands of posters, however, ward councillor candidates were only given posters if they paid for them, and each candidate in Cape Town had to pay for a minimum of 100 posters.
“Our posters were printed in Cape Town and Durban. The pasting and flighting of the posters created temporary employment opportunities – our posters were pasted in Delft.
ANC Western Cape election head Cameron Dugmore said posters were a major cost driver for the party with close to 100 000, both for those with the president’s face on and those for the candidates, made and put up.
“Our posters were printed in Joburg by a black-owned company. Our service provider who provided board, glue and pasting is local service provider Gregory Burns from Delft,” said Dugmore.
Dugmore said election posters had a big impact, but local door-to-door canvassing by 10 000 of their volunteers was the party’s main thrust.
DA councillor candidate for Ward 63 Carmen Siebritz said 100 000 posters were distributed across the City for the DA, and had 220 posters for her own campaign of which many mysteriously disappeared from the poles
While independent candidates worked with limited resources as they had to cover the costs of their election material themselves.
And independent councillor candidate for Ward 60 (Lansdowne and surrounding areas) said he has trust in his community, and budgeted for just under R100 000 for the election of which R40 000 was spent on posters – the labour created 6 jobs and the final products were made possible through the help of 8 volunteers.
However, independent candidate Hanif Loonat said poster theft and defacing seems to be a common issue in communities in the lead up to the municipal election date. Loonat said after putting put up about 600 posters, over 40 were taken off by unknown individuals and more than 35 were damaged around the Kenwyn area.