Rebecca Davis recommends you report anyone who whispers in your ear in the voting booth By the time you read this, South Africa will have voted in the local government elections, a set of polls so hyped that you'd think we were all voting for president of the world, rather than choosing a party to take forever to fix the potholes on our road.That's if we are lucky enough to have a road, of course. If you've been watching the DA's television ads, you have likely received the message that South Africa is a dystopian hellhole. There's Mmusi Maimane, striding through a rat-infested township. There's an average South African on her way to work in a minibus, looking around sadly at the waste-littered roads and pondering the spiralling unemployment rate.story_article_left1One reason I have found the TV ads from the major political parties so fascinating is the radically different picture they paint of the state of the nation. The offering from the EFF has been even more depressing than those of the DA. It shows people getting buried in "congested graves", suggesting that South Africans under the thumb of the ANC cannot find peace even in death.The ANC - or rather, whatever swanky ad agency it recruited to make its ads - appears to have internalised the "Joe the Plumber" lessons from US politics, namely that you need to present the public with a "common man" figure we can relate to.One of their ads featured a villager from the Eastern Cape displaying the household appliances that she now has the electricity to operate, thanks to ANC rule. As she sits back on her couch to turn on the TV with her remote, she says: "We are happy. We are grateful." I'd like to know what channel she's watching.There was a fun drinking game to play along with the DA ads, which would have required you to take a shot of liquor every time the words "Nelson Mandela" or "Madiba" were mentioned.You'd have been three sheets to the wind by the time the DA's logo unspooled across your screen. You know what would have failed to make you even mildly tipsy, however? A drinking game where you took a shot every time a DA ad showed a white person.One DA ad showed a woman in the voting booth being inspired to vote for the blue party after hearing Mandela's voice. This was irresponsible messaging. If you are ever in a voting booth and you hear whispering in your ear, you must report it to the Independent Electoral Commission.I tell you: by the time this is over, we'll all be longing for insurance ads...