After the hoopla, the people will speak
Reports by Jaspreet Kindra, Sechaba ka Nkosi, Marianne Merten, Evidence wa ka Ngobeni, Phillip Nkosi, Peter Dickson and Justin Arenstein Free State
The Free State has had a strikingly lacklustre run-up to the local government poll. The Electoral Institute of South Africa (Eisa) says the parties’ election campaigns have failed to tackle specific local issues, such as farm killings, and appear to have instead mirrored parties’ staid national campaigns.
The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) predicts that the African National Congress will bag 70% of the urban and 93% of the rural votes respectively.
The challenge for the party is the revival of Mangaung, which includes urban Bloemfontein, the former homeland city of Botshabelo and Thaba Nchu a poverty-stricken semi-rural settlement that also belonged to the former Qwaqwa government.
Indications are that the ANC will win comfortably in most towns. In Bloemfontein the ANC is fielding 44-year-old pharmacist Papi Mokoeana. He takes on Peter Chere, a Democratic Alliance stalwart since the days of the Progressive Federal Party. Former apartheid mayor Frik Jankowitz is expected to help Chere in his bid. Either way, most residents of the city must be praying their new mayor will be more flamboyant and more visible than the province’s Premier, Winkie Direko.
In Qwaqwa, one of the biggest constituencies, the contest is between former student and health activist Dr Balekile Mzwanga and the DA’s 24-year-old Paseka Mokoena. The youth has been touted as one of the party’s rising stars since joining three years ago. He currently runs the party’s constituent office.
The ANC has been gunning for the rural vote in the province with its pledges to provide free water, electricity, effective councils and job security.
The DA has hit back by harping on about the disastrous state of the province’s municipalities, 90% of which, the party says, are bankrupt. As in its national campaign, the DA has sought to deride the ANC’s “jobs for pals” approach. It has, among other things, also mooted the revival of the commando system to provide security for farmers.
It has taken national leaders to inject any excitement into proceedings. Last month President Thabo Mbeki visited the province. The DA called on Peter Leon and Pieter Geldenhuis to help boost its campaign.
However, the same battle has been taken by the Alliance 2000 a loose coalition of right-wing parties under the leadership of the Freedom Party. The alliance focuses on farm killings and security as its prime election drive. Their impact in the election is likely, as Eisa points out, to split the opposition votes and reduce the DA’s vote in the election. The HSRC says the party will get 10% in urban centres and 2% in rural settlements.
KwaZulu-Natal
KwaZulu-Natal, one of only two provinces that has eluded the ANC, is going to be a close call for the national ruling party. The key is who out of the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party will get the rural vote in the province’s faction-riddled hinterland.
The ANC already has control over the urban vote in KwaZulu-Natal it has Durban and Pietermaritzburg under its belt. The IFP, meanwhile, has traditionally relied on the rural vote to retain its hold over the province.
Over the past two elections, the ANC’s support base has grown by more than 7% in the province. It almost caught up with the IFP’s 41,9% in last year’s general election, scoring 39,38%.
And there are signs that the ruling party is making inroads into the IFP’s traditional support base. Last year, the ANC’s support base among rural voters rose by almost 11% from the local government election held in the province in 1996, while the IFP’s dropped by the same amount. Political analyst Dumisani Hlope says one of the reasons for the shift to the ANC is that the party has cashed in on the delivery of some ANC ministries.
The IFP’s struggle to retain the rural vote has been exacerbated by the political fallout from the new municipal boundaries accompanying the shake-up of local government.
The demarcation of the new municipalities has had a two-fold effect on the party’s standing in the province. The new municipalities incorporate sizeable chunks of ANC-controlled urban areas with IFP-controlled rural areas, providing considerable scope for friction.
While the new municipal system was supposed to democratise local government, strategists across the party line do not rule out the notion that it was part of an ANC agenda to diffuse the IFP’s hold on the province.
The new local government system also neuters the amakhosi, who control a substantial portion of rural KwaZulu-Natal and who, traditionally, have delivered the IFP the rural vote. The amakhosi have increasingly been feeling threatened about the effective erosion of their authority by the new municipalities.
KwaZulu-Natal-based political analyst Laurence Piper says the IFP is doomed “because it relies on the amakhosi to deliver its rural vote, but amakhosi loyalty is beginning to waver, and the rural vote is slowly shrinking”.
Piper says the IFP has only itself to blame. It has, he says, done too little too late to bolster the case of the amakhosi.
“The party over the years has only paid lip-service to the enhancement of traditional leaders’ powers,” Piper says.
The IFP is apparently now trying to mobilise the amakhosi against the ANC and has called an imbizo on Sunday.
The ANC has meanwhile sought to take on the IFP with an intensive and gruelling campaign strategy. Over the past few weeks ANC leaders including Mbeki have covered hundreds of kilometres of rural KwaZulu-Natal, travelling into tribal authority areas and assuring them of a role in the new democratic municipal set-up.
The DA has also profited from growing dissatisfaction on the part of the inkosis, 33 of whom have defected to the party on the southern coast of KwaZulu-Natal.
According to party strategists, while the IFP is expected to retain strongholds such as Ulundi and Nongoma, the ANC is expected to win at least five of the nine district councils besides Durban metro in the province.
Piper says the ANC should carry KwaZulu-Natal, but cannot assume victory as the IFP voters are “very disciplined”.
Western Cape Everything and anything has been fair game in the hotly contested municipal elections in the Western Cape the only province where political rivals knew they had to fight hard, if not necessarily fair, to win.
While slugging it out, contestants from the ANC and DA have promised jobs, a minimum of free basic services and better policing. They have played on voters’ fears and their sense of fairness.
Any occasion donating blood, train rides to Khayelitsha, senior citizens’ dinners and tree-planting ceremonies has been turned into an opportunity to score political points.
It remains unclear whether these efforts have been enough to sway the estimated 33% of undecided potential voters and get as many voters as possible to cast their ballot on December 5.
With pre-election polls showing a tight race for the Cape Town unicity and its close to R9-billion budget, the DA this week launched its “Get Out and Vote” campaign.
“Don’t give away the Cape by failing to vote” urged DA leader Tony Leon on Cape radio stations. “Keep the ANC out,” demanded DA Cape Town unicity mayoral candidate Peter Marais.
The DA itself admits it will lose from a low voter turnout. The key to Tuesday’s municipal poll lies with the coloured communities, which constitute around 60% of the electorate. There have been suggestions that Ramadan will dent the turnout of Muslim voters.
The latest Markinor poll puts the DA out in front with 40% of the vote, compared with the ANC’s 28%.
During the campaign, Marais has jokingly suggested broadcasting welcomes and crime awareness messages to tourists from loud speakers dotted around the city centre. Leon turned a darker shade of pale on election posters on the Cape Flats. The controversial posters featuring a blood-splattered Israeli flag claiming “A vote for the DA is a vote for Israel” have appeared and disappeared overnight from a predominantly Muslim Cape Flats suburb.
Finally this week other registered political parties like the Abolition of Income Tax and Usury Party have made an appearance. “If you vote for a non-Muslim party and they give gay rights, you share in the sin,” warns the Africa Muslim Party.
Much attention has focused on the mayoral battle between the boisterous, populist Marais, who made a political comeback after being expelled from the provincial cabinet earlier this year, and ANC rival Lynne Browne, the provincial deputy speaker with a reputation as an extremely efficient backroom organiser.
Marais has thrived on pumping hands and kissing babies. Brown has listened to problems, taken notes and promised action in countless one-on-one interactions.
Marais’s often brash antics have unsettled DA election organisers, especially those used to the disciplined, sophisticated Democratic Party strategies.
He has condemned prostitution and homosexuality because of his Christian morals and promised jobs to anyone from hawkers and fishermen to unemployed single mothers.
North West The ANC has lined up a team of young intellectuals and former Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) stalwarts to help swat the United Christian Democratic Party (UCDP) in the forthcoming local government elections.
The party has nominated Premier Popo Molefe’s wife Tumi to beef up its campaign to win the capital Mafikeng. Its mayoral candidate is ANC Women’s League national executive member and current deputy mayor Jane Matsomela.
Mafikeng’s ailing economy has been the main issue during the campaign, during which the ANC has had to combat mounting voter apathy. And Mafikeng is where the UCDP’s Lucas Mangope’s support has shown real signs of growing. The former homeland leader remains popular with rural communities and chiefs who benefited from his administration particularly in his hometown of Lehurutsi near Zeerust.
The polls put the ANC way ahead. The HSRC predicts that the ANC will win 85% of the urban and 79% of the rural vote. But the ruling party has not been without its share of problems. First there were the media reports that infighting within the ANC has led to alleged threats by Molefe’s supporters to depose mayors who support his former rival, Reverend Joe Tselapedi. Then there have been allegations that rural communities in Mafikeng have threatened to boycott the elections in protest against the slow pace of delivery from the ANC-led government. Such disgruntlement has also been reported in the urban constituencies of Potchefstroom and Klerksdorp.
Northern Province The ANC in the Northern Province is set to make a clean sweep in the elections but opposition parties are cashing in on mounting cynicism with the ruling party in some parts of the province.
The opposition against the ANC’s domination is being led by the DA and the United Democratic Movement. The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), the Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo), the IFP, the Ximoko Party, and the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) are also in the race but only on paper.
The ANC is likely to secure about 80% of the votes and is undaunted by opposition claims that its domination in the province is threatened.
On Wednesday the party rushed to announce that two of the DA’s Pietersburg counsellors have defected to the party structures. Six key members of the UDM also announced their defection to the ANC.
Leaders of the DA, which is the only opposition party contesting all municipalities in the province, and the UDM have been making empty brags that many of the ANC’s mayoral candidate will be sent packing after the elections.
Both the DA and the UDM claim to have made significant inroads in some parts of the province in the past few years and say they are serious contenders in 13 of the province’s 24 municipalities.
The UDM claims it will win at least six municipalities and a handful of wards after the elections. The UDM’s best hope of a mayoral seat is in Greater Tzaneen, where Matome Sekoaila is up against the ANC’s OJ Mushwana.
Since 1994 many investors have pulled out of Tzaneen, leaving behind empty stomachs which is likely to haunt the ruling party’s elections efforts in the area.
The DA is optimistic it will bag the Thoyandou, Moletji-Matlala, Bochum/My Darling and Lebowakgomo municipalities. The DA’s hopes for the Moletji-Matlala municipality rest on an unemployed youth, Kaizer Matume, who acquired his matric three years ago.
In the Thohoyandou municipality, which is currently embroiled in a border dispute with the Malamulele residents, the DA’s mayoral candidate, Colonel George Ramaremisa, was considered a lightweight compared with the ANC’s Samson Ndou.
But the ANC’s campaign was dealt a heavy blow when Ndou was struck from the contest after it emerged that he had registered to vote in Cape Town. The ANC has replaced Ndou with a low-profile headman, Norman Makumbane, giving the DA more of a chance.
A close race is expected in Polokwane (Pietersburg) municipality. The ANC is running Thabo Makunyane, who is believed to have strong support in the Pietersburg area. The DA is fielding Nick Oudtshoorn, who draws his support from white communities, but remains convinced he is in with a chance.
In other municipalities the ANC has looked for candidates beyond its structures and selected two former Gazankulu and Venda homeland stalwarts.
Former Gazankulu education minister Brighton Tlakula has been roped in as ANC mayor-elect for the Greater Louis Trichardt municipality, while Brigadier Gabriel Ramushwana, the former Venda dictator who ousted Chief Frank Ravele of Venda in a bloodless coup in 1989, was chosen for Messina. Northern Province ANC general secretary Benny Boshielo says Ramushwana was chosen after the community there demanded that he be made Messina’s mayor, while Tlakula helped the ANC’s elections campaign last year. Ramushwana, who was running a small farm, used to advise the ANC on various matters, including electioneering for the coming municipal elections.