Chiara Carter
The Democratic Party is anticipating further defections by New National Party politicians following its stunning defeat of the NNP in an area which for decades was a stronghold of the former National Party.
The Kraaifontein municipal by-election on Wednesday saw DP candidate Fanie Jacobs win 531 votes, as opposed to 364 votes cast for independent candidate Deon Basson, leaving the NNP third with 250 votes.
About one-third of voters cast their ballots in Kraaifontein, which is a white, largely Afrikaans-speaking and lower-income area of Cape Town. The results were in stark contrast to those of 1996, when the NP won 1 422 votes, as opposed to 729 cast for Basson. The DP did not contest the area in 1996.
This week’s victory gave further impetus to the DP’s hopes of supplanting the NNP’s power in the Western Cape.
The NNP has recently been afflicted by tensions between conservative and liberal factions and bickering about its selection of candidates for the elections.
But while the Kraaifontein result indicates the DP stands a good chance of winning white voters from the NNP, the party has yet to prove its ability to win support in the mainly coloured areas.
An upcoming by-election in the Cape Flats suburb of Lotus River is likely to prove an acid test for the DP’s ambition to provide an alternative political home for coloured voters, who are also being wooed by both the African National Congress and the NNP.
Several senior NNP leaders, mostly coloured, recently defected to the DP and regional leader Hennie Bester confirmed more NNP politicians were poised to join his party.
Many of these potential defectors are understood to be councillors, but the group also includes members of the regional legislature.
Several other senior NNP politicians are understood to be involved in negotiations with rival parties, but talks have apparently become bogged down over the question of guaranteed positions.
Bester said the results were a further indication of the political realignment taking place. They “vindicated” the recent defections of senior NNP members of Parliament and the Western Cape legislature. He said the Kraaifontein victory showed that the NNP’s support base had lost faith in the party.
“If the NNP cannot mobilise its supporters in a by-election in an area it has dominated for 40 years, it means that either its structures have collapsed or voters have abandoned them,” said Bester.