divide
In a bid to win votes, parties in KwaZulu- Natal are fielding candidates in areas other than their traditional strongholds
Jaspreet Kindra
Political parties in KwaZulu-Natal are taking special steps to increase their appeal beyond their customary, often racially designated, support bases to bag as many seats as possible on the proportional representation list. The imposition of new municipal boundaries under the Municipal Structures Act has led to the integration of former racially segregated areas in the province, spurring parties to adjust campaigns aimed at particular races. So candidates are standing to represent all race groups in their respective constituencies.
African National Congress candidate Trevor Bonhomme’s ward, for example, now comprises his traditional coloured vote bank as well as a substantial chunk of KwaMashu. Minority Front (MF) leader Amichand Rajbansi says the new Act means that parties that contest all wards are in a better position to claim a larger number of seats on the proportional representation list. Unlike the last local government elections, where votes for the ward candidate and the proportional representation (PR) vote were calculated separately, this time a percentage of the ward vote received by each party will be added to its PR total. The ANC, which forged a strategic alliance with the MF – a party identified with Indian voters – in the former Indian suburbs in Durban for the 1996 municipal elections, is fighting it alone this year.
The MF, meanwhile, is fielding candidates of all hues, even in former black areas such as KwaMashu and Umlazi in Durban.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) – which as its other incarnation, the Democratic Party, lobbied the Indian and coloured communities around affirmative action in 1996 – has declared that it is a party for “all the people”. More than 50% of the DA’s list of candidates is black. It is contesting 172 of the 173 wards in the predominantly rural northern KwaZulu-Natal, where 74% of its candidates are black.
According to the DA’s regional organiser for Northern KwaZulu-Natal, Nhlanhla Mthabela, the party expects to win at least 70 of the 172 wards it is contesting in the Inkatha Freedom Party heartland.
ANC representative Mtholephi Mthimkhulu says his party has always been non-racial. The “non-racial process” has gained “intensity” in KwaZulu-Natal, he says.
After the ANC’s dismal performance in the former Indian areas in the 1994 elections, the party had come to an arrangement with the MF for the 1996 municipal elections and refrained from actively campaigning in areas contested by the MF.
The tacit alliance had caused unhappiness in certain circles of the party, which viewed Rajbansi as a remnant of apartheid politics. But then-president Nelson Mandela put his stamp of approval on the alliance with Rajbansi, silencing the voices of dissent.
However, the ANC was conscious of the criticism the arrangement had evoked as not being in line with its non-racial character. Since last year the party has intensified its efforts to woo the Indian community – particularly in areas such as Chatsworth and Phoenix in Durban. In this year’s municipal elections, where local identity is crucial, the party has decided to test the waters in the former Indian suburbs on its own by fielding its own candidates.
Sources within the party also say that the ANC did not wish to be “dictated to” by the MF on which wards it could actively contest.
Meanwhile the DA, which is forging a new identity for itself, is keeping racially sensitive issues such as affirmative action on low heat for this municipal election.
The party’s national strategist, Ryan Coetzee, says the party’s focus this year is on “inclusivity” and on trying to spread its influence across the “great historical racial divide”. It’s a departure from last year’s strategy, which was to build itself up as an opposition party against the ANC and its policies.
In trying to woo voters across the racial divide, the party is fielding candidates in IFP strongholds, such as Nongoma, Ulundi in the east across to Newcastle, Dundee in the west down to Pomeroy at the bottom of the region.
Party organiser Mthabela, a sitting ANC ward councillor in the Newcastle municipality, who defected to the DA in May, has been instrumental in setting up structures throughout the region. Since Mthabela, who was also regional organiser for the South African National Civic Organisation, left the ANC for the DA, two more councillors from the party in the Newcastle municipality followed him. Another two councillors from the IFP followed suit. Newcastle, he says, is as good as the DA’s now.
Among the other interesting candidates lined up by the DA is Prince Phila Zulu, King Goodwill Zwelithini’s cousin and a member of the New National Party. He is a ward candidate in Nongoma.
Mthabela is optimistic about the changing racial dynamics of the party. “It is the reality – the majority of the population is black. The party will soon also be taken over by black leadership.”
Zulu, however, intervenes to say: “The party is multi-racial. We accept all races.”