“They Will Do Anything for These Votes”: Reading the ANC Populist Performances of Ordinariness in the 2024 Electoral Campaign

Political electoral campaigns in Africa are largely performative. Political leaders frequent churches to attract the sympathy and support of the faithful masses as they perform belonging to the same family of the children of God. In addition, populism has been one of the strategies used by politicians to sway public opinion. Populism is used as a performative and discursive trope to communicate authenticity. These performances lead to ordinary people believing that the politicians are “one of us.” This article is a qualitative content analysis of the discursive performances of ordinariness as populist strategies by the former South African liberation movement and ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC). We use Rai’s political performance theory to demonstrate how different intersecting elements were used by the ANC in its 2024 electoral campaign. We argue that the ANC used these performances of ordinariness to communicate and create certain perceptions about itself to its potential voters. In addition, we use audience readings of these performances to gauge these perceptions and how ordinary people received them. Data were gathered on social media using digital ethnography.