Commuters to the Cape Town CBD this week were greeted by a phalanx of posters lining main routes in and around the city announcing that the Cape Party was contesting the local elections.
Slipping in ahead of other parties, all of which are bound to soon be vying for all the streetpoles in the city to claim their advertising space, the Cape Party’s poster campaign exhorts voters to “declare the Cape independent”.
Spokesperson Adrian Keyes said the party – which has registered with the IEC – had its roots in social media. “It started three years ago with a Facebook group that supported the idea of Cape independence. We had 900 members then. That formed the roots of the party as the idea of independence grew on the site and gained traction with people.”
The initial stage of its poster campaign has already born fruit. Keyes says the party is being inundated with sms’s and queries. “The poster campaign has worked. The interest is there. It was just the first phase of the rollout across the Cape. We plan on contesting Stellenbosch, Paarl and the West Coast,” Keyes said. “The posters have given us high visibility.”
He said because the party didn’t have a vast budget, social media was key to its campaign. “Our Twitter feed is about to come to life, and we have a strong Facebook presence. From this, we’ve learnt that our core group is 18 to 35, middle class and gatvol.”
