With the local government election only two days away, I’ve been quite impressed with the coverage by local blogs.<\/p>\n
The SA Blog Awards site<\/a> lists 10 nominations for best SA site about politics (and for some reason I’ve been nominated, albeit under the wrong name).<\/p>\n Looking at the local government election coverage by each of the nominated blogs is interesting (and you can use it to decide who to vote for if you wish).<\/p>\n Fodder<\/a> doesn’t have much, the too-good-to-be-missed near-exclusion of the ACDP<\/a> being the highlight.<\/p>\n Jonty Fisher<\/a> has no coverage that I can see. In fact just after writing that he did post something, mocking the ID deputy chairperson for claiming that they will win 40%-56% of the votes<\/a>? Uh, really? <\/p>\n Moral Fiber<\/a> also has little, one recent post slating the ACDP<\/a> for being hypocritical in trying to win back their right to contest the election in Cape Town.<\/p>\n It’s Almost Supernatural<\/a>, which focuses mainly on Israeli issues, also has little coverage, but unsurprisingly the only relevant post accuses the AMP of hate speech<\/a>.<\/p>\n Politics.za.net<\/a> is a step up, with quite a lot of coverage, including the gem of a discovery<\/a> in the Biblical Voters Guide<\/a> I mentioned earlier<\/a>.<\/p>\n Vaz Lube<\/a> is equally surprised as I am in being nominated for the category, and has little coverage to speak of. Neither does Mzansi Afrika<\/a><\/p>\n Inky Goblin’s<\/a> coverage is more along the lines of the dog poster appearing on Cape Town streets right now, with its Not the ANC newsletter<\/a>. It also deserves a prize for its use of webcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n Of all the nominees though, Commentary<\/a>, last year’s winner, takes the cake and is streets ahead of the rest. While the others are characterised by the odd jibe, Commentary’s Laurence Carombo has written a reasoned endorsement of the DA<\/a>, not surprising when the site describes the general political alignment of its authors as moderate conservative and libertarian<\/em>.<\/p>\n Surprisingly, someamongus<\/a> wasn’t nominated. They (he\/her?) would give Commentary a run with their good coverage, including a Q&A with Simon Grindrod<\/a> and Joe Seremane<\/a>.<\/p>\n However, the election blog coverage doesn’t end there. A newcomer on the scene is the Mail and Guardian’s election blog<\/a>. Each of what purports to be Bantu Holomisa, Malizole Diko, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Patricia De Lille, Pieter Mulder, Tony Leon and Ziba Jiyane write. Some of them are so badly written it can only be the leader, delirious after a long day on the road. So how do they shape up? On the whole they’re quite disappointing, with little of interest being said. I may be an election junkie, but stuff such as and then I’m going to accompany the mayoral candidate to vote in Tableview. Then I’m going to accompany the deputy mayoral candidate Charlotte Williams in Mitchell’s Plain.<\/em> is pretty dull.<\/p>\n Bantu Holomisa: Not badly written, moderately interesting, especially the clearly miscategorised post about him handing out IFP t-shirts<\/a>.<\/p>\n Malizole Diko: Being from the United Independent Front, the party with the least high profile of the lot, you’d expect he’d be using every trick in the book to try and drum up some publicity. However, his page, perhaps appropriately, just says blog coming soon<\/em>.<\/p>\n Mangosuthu Buthelezi: Another unexciting collection. His posts were mostly (if not all) written by party officials, including one sickeningly sweet post<\/a> by personal assistant Thamsanqa Duma.<\/p>\n Patricia De Lille: Started off quite well, but perhaps fatigue set in, as the last few posts have been deadly dull (hers was the post I quoted earlier).<\/p>\n Pieter Mulder: He has quite impressed me recently with his toned down, reasonable approach. However, his posts reminded me of the party’s roots, bringing up the Boer War<\/a> and encouraging churchgoing<\/a>.<\/p>\n Tony Leon: The best written. As the love him or hate him man of SA politics, the comments on one of his posts are predictably fiery<\/a>. <\/p>\n Ziba Jiyane: Another churchgoer<\/a>, most of the posts are also pretty poorly written, and not particularly interesting.<\/p>\n The whole blog is a nice idea. Even if the contents aren’t particularly interesting, it’s good publicity for the M&G.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With the local government election only two days away, I’ve been quite impressed with the coverage by local blogs. The SA Blog Awards site lists 10 nominations for best SA site about politics (and for some reason I’ve been nominated, albeit under the wrong name). Looking at the local government election coverage by each of… Continue reading Local election blogs<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fire-social","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}