DISPATCHES FROM THE WAR ROOM: In the Trenches with Five Extraordinary Leaders, by Stanley B. Greenberg (Thomas Dunne Books)

There has never been a better description of the nuts and bolts of South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994 than is contained in this fascinating book by Stan Greenberg. In retrospect, we know the election result was a bit contrived, more consensual than literal - especially in KwaZulu-Natal. We recall the endless queues, the excitement and the peaceful nature of that first democratic vote with fondness. But until now, nobody has really got under the skin of that first poll. That’s probably because nobody loves an election quite like Stan Greenberg.

Greenberg is a pollster, probably the most famous one in the world. His art is converting what politicians are trying to say into slogans, promises, strategies – and, of course, into votes. He is the person who holds a considerable degree of responsibility for ensuring Bill Clinton’s election as the first Democrat President of the US in more than two decades. And his version of the Clinton odyssey is wonderfully interesting.

Perhaps it was always going to take a dispassionate foreigner to untangle the myths and legends of South Africa’s 1994 election. It certainly needed someone who is obsessed with the mechanics of direct, universal representation. Greenberg narrates a behind-the-scenes account of that election, and in particular of Nelson Mandela, that is breathtaking in its intimacy. He writes of Mandela attending focus groups around the country and watching people from behind the one-way glass talk about the future. He recounts how Mandela, who seemed so laconic and natural on the podium, rushed off the stage to ask his pollster if he’d hit the right notes, got the precise message across.

This is not the Mandela that most South Africans know, and his image is none the worse for it. All five leaders described in this book, Clinton, Tony Blair, Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, Bolivian president Gonzalo de Lozada, as well as Mandela himself, are united in their belief of the power of the pollster. Each, writes Greenberg, “used polling to determine if people were with them, increasing the prospects for actually doing what they set out to do. And as they drove forward on the mission, they used polling to look back over their shoulder to see if the populace was following, if the battalions were marching with them. They were consumed with keeping or building support for the mission.”.

So what does a pollster do, exactly? They canvass voters by phone, they hold focus groups targeting specific groups of undecided or key groups. They use the data to make recommendations on policy, on speeches and on the substance, issues and direction of elections for high office. At the height of the Clinton presidential campaign, Greenberg was conducting major assessments of voter attitudes virtually every day. He continually assessed margins and how policies and promises impacted on potential voters.

In South Africa, a country with which Greenberg has had connections most of his life, Greenberg tells of how the ANC election team were keen on “Now is the Time” as the key slogan for the 1994 poll. But Greenberg and his colleagues had a hunch it wouldn’t work. They ran the slogan past a few focus groups, proved it made little positive impression, and came up with “A Better Life for All”. Far from the organic product of the movement, the slogan was concocted by a chain-smoking American pollster called Frank based on similar phrases used during a recent campaign for the US Senate. And so the romantic myth of South Africa’s first democratic election begins to crumble.

The story of how Mandela prepared for his famous televised debate with FW De Klerk was also hugely interesting. Initially Mandela was against rehearsing, but at the urging of his American advisors and with veteran journalist Allister Sparks pretending to be De Klerk, Mandela figured out a strategy for coping with difficult questions and counter-arguments.

The first trial run was disastrous. Mandela’s opening in the debate was “scattered and defensive”. He slumped and looked inattentive, “stiff, dour and old”. He was arrogant, ill-prepared and “Sparks slaughtered him”. After a bit of practice and preparation, the old boxing champion emerged and Mandela gained confidence and eloquence. When the time came, “he walked on stage and ripped out De Klerk’s heart”.

Most disturbing is Greenberg’s account of the mayhem that took place during vote counting in late April 1994. It is hard to recall now how close to the edge of the precipice South Africa really was at that time. Greenberg’s account is a forceful reminder. The bombs, bomb scares, violence in KwaZulu-Natal and the Shell House shootings created a chaotic backdrop for South Africa’s most famous hour. The election itself was so marred by violations of the electoral laws, regulations and code of conduct that, according to Greenberg, the ANC election team simply didn’t believe a “free and fair” election had taken place.

As the counting was almost complete on the 29th April, the ANC’s KwaZulu-Natal leadership traveled up to Johannesburg with an official complaint in their hands about the handling of the poll. A press conference had been scheduled for the next day in which the ANC was planning to announce its official rejection of the poll. As the party leadership mulled over this course of action, “Mandela had said nothing during the discussion. Then he brought the room to a full stop. ‘Tell the comrades to cancel the press conference. We will not do anything to make the election illegitimate. The ANC will not say the election is not ‘free and fair’. Prepare our people in Natal and the Western Cape to lose’.” Rivetting stuff and, as far as I know, never published before.

There is much that is surprising about this account from the placement of ANC stalwart Marcel Golding in Clinton’s Little Rock war room to Greenberg’s amazement with the political sophistication of South Africans from the deepest, most rural corners of the country. There is much to enjoy too in his writing on the other leaders, especially Clinton, about the perennial “woman problem” that plagued his campaign and, depressingly, about how Clinton’s dream was effectively hijacked by the autonomous, slow-moving machine that is Washington DC. Obama, beware.

Greenberg is defensive about his art. Pollsters, the “high priests of politics” have been heavily criticized by many, not least by senior members of the Bush administration for their arcane techniques. Greenberg is unapologetic. “What I did in South Africa – as well as in Britain and Bolivia – was help fashion a narrative that enabled voters to interpret the reality and project what the future might bring”.

He is convincing in portraying his own commitment to a left-leaning political perspective and to an un-cynical belief in the leaders whose causes he championed so successfully.
He writes: “I have spent most of my professional and political life in disparate settings and disparate ways trying to recreate a multiracial majority opposed to inequality and private excess and finding ways to build a society where equality and community mattered”. And that seems pretty believable. I wonder if he ran it through a focus group first?

* Adrian Hadland is a director with the Democracy and Governance research programme of the Human Sciences Research Council. He writes here in his private capacity.