Billboards hit nerves but tell truths
· Citizen
The DA’s motorway billboard offsetting premier Panyaza Lesufi’s now infamous “I even bathe in a hotel” comment, with the DA’s promise to provide water, is fascinating on multiple levels.
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It shows how effective political messaging can be when it identifies a single issue and strikes a nerve.
Whether the ANC succeeds in its court bid to get it removed remains to be seen because (a) Lesufi did say it and (b) Gauteng is suffering from an ongoing and highly inconvenient water “shedding” primarily due to the incumbent government (national, provincial and municipal)’s failure to either maintain the reticulation infrastructure or invest in new.
It’s not something the ANC want to be reminding everyone of as the country gears up to choose new municipal leaders before the end of the year.
But much like President Cyril Ramaphosa’s unscripted remarks last September to cadres that Cape Town was better run than most of the ANC managed municipalities, it’s an inconvenient truth.
The age-old test for journalists in reporting stories that others don’t want in the public realm is that it has to be true and in the public interest.
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Comments are free but facts aren’t. You can push your opinion – and have it protected under the press code – if it is based on facts that are generally believed to be true.
Which is where the billboard comes into play because it uses an AI-generated picture of Lesufi clad in a suit under a shower.
It’s there for illustrative purposes and is nowhere near as funny as the satirical memes of Lesufi dressed as Marie Antoinette of French revolution fame, equating his need for a hotel shower to her infamous injunction to the starving peasants to eat cake.
But that meme wouldn’t necessarily have the immediacy or relevance as the picture of Lesufi under the showerhead (which has other connotations given cartoonist Zapiro’s use of it in his drawings of former president Jacob Zuma).
We can expect more use of AI in political messaging once the election date is gazetted. There’ll be a powerful temptation to not let the facts stand in the way of a good story – or idea – either.
That would be a fatal mistake. As overly robust editors will tell you to their chagrin, the courts don’t have much of a sense of humour at the best of times, but especially not when you punch down.
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