OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Thursday 7.15pm
AN election rally by opposition United Democratic Movement president Bantu Holomisa was disrupted at the University of Cape Town on Thursday by a rowdy group of African National Congress-supporting youths.
About 1000 rowdy ANC supporters almost took charge of the rally, jeering Holomisa when he tried to speak, but not managing to force the leader to call off his address.
Holomisa was touring the hotly-contested Western Cape province, won by the National Party in the last election in 1994, less than a week before South Africa’s second democratic elections on June 2.
The disruption is the latest in a series of incidents between the UDM and the ruling ANC, who both hope to woo the same voters with similar manifestos. On Wednesday, Holomisa was forced to abandon a rally at the University of Fort Hare, in the Eastern Cape province, after a confrontation between students aligned to the ANC and UDM threatened to turn violent. Fort Hare, in the small southern town of Alice, educated a number of prominent ANC members and other African leaders.
UDM supporters elicited harsh words from President Nelson Mandela last month when they caused havoc at a Freedom Day rally, to mark the first all-race election on April 27 1994, in the Eastern Cape city of Umtata.
In March, a wave of political slayings in the black townships of Cape Town claimed the lives of five members of the ANC and UDM. The two parties have also clashed in the violence-torn town of Richmond, in the KwaZulu-Natal province. — AFP