The atmosphere was charged in Rhodes's packed Barratt Lecture Theatre on the evening of Wednesday 30 April for the live-streaming of the OppiTV Election Debate.
The atmosphere was charged in Rhodes's packed Barratt Lecture Theatre on the evening of Wednesday 30 April for the live-streaming of the OppiTV Election Debate.
The vehemence of the audience response to the eight political representatives participating in the debate proved quite distracting at times, and gave credence to The Oppidan Press’s innovative decision to have separate venues for the debate (in the television studios of the School of Journalism and Media Studies) and the viewing of it (in Barratt).
In response to queries from the floor, the ANC’s well-worn 'we-brought-this-country-out-of-apartheid’ argument was met with general derision from the young audience.
Some felt disconcerted by the poor levels of argumentation and the dumbing-down of politics, evinced by the audience response to the ill-prepared representative of the African People’s Convention (APC).
Rather astutely, these young adults noticed the manner in which the seven other party representatives took every opportunity they could to slight the ANC, with the DA representative being the most outspoken and receiving the most cheers from the viewers.
As this is the first election 'born-frees' are eligible to vote, it was encouraging to see them engaging with the issues via social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
However, there was a sense that nothing new was being said by any of the party representatives.
Less than three hours after the debate started, #OppiDebate was trending nationally on Twitter.
Oppidan Press’ Hannah McDonald tweeted that the hashtag was “…trending above Mean Girls’ 10th anniversary… politics trumps pop culture!”
This was especially encouraging, in light of the notion that the majority of Rhodents are politically apathetic.
Other tweets of note indicated the lack of young Caucasian male representation in the audience (@AmzWilkes), and another emphasised the need to distinguish speech style from speech content (@Hlali06 tweeted "good oratory skills don't mean good points").
Disturbingly, whenever a non-General South African English accent was heard, the room would erupt with laughter.
Watch a video of the debate here.
