EMSIE FERREIRA, Cape Town | Friday
PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki’s African National Congress (ANC) is pulling out all the stops in a bid to win the closely-contested race for mayor of greater Cape Town in next week’s municipal elections, which will consolidate local government throughout the country.
Control of the city and the Western Cape province has eluded the ruling party since the end of apartheid in 1994.
The December 5 election has sparked a far livelier battle in Cape Town than in the rest of the country, complete with scaremongering, poster wars and former president Nelson Mandela hitting the campaign trial for underdog ANC mayoral candidate Lynne Brown.
Cameron Dugmore, the ANC representative in the Western Cape, says the party believes winning Cape Town would lead to victory in the renegade province in general elections in 2004.
“We think that if we win Cape Town now, and deliver for people until the next election, we can win the Western Cape,” he said.
Bob Mattes of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) said the swollen Cape Town municipality was the result of ANC gerrymandering and “a naked attempt to get their tentacles into the more wealthy areas”.
But, he said, apart from wanting to redress inequality, winning Cape Town with its 60% majority of coloured (mixed-race) voters had also became a “psychological” prize for the ANC.
“People in the ANC would like homogeneity. They have an ideal rooted in Black Consciousness of unity between black, Indian and coloured voters. They see what happened in Cape Town as anti-black racism.”
The DA has, he says, been trying to bury its white, wealthy image and win the support of all races, as evidenced by posters promising that it will work “for all the people”. The DA “Keep the ANC out” campaign appeals to the fears of all races.
Leon has been warning Capetonians on radio that if the ANC were to win it would mean “more crime, higher rates and crumbling services”.
They should only look to Johannesburg’s northern suburb of Sandton where rates have shot up 300%, he adds in the advert that begins ominously with the sound of police sirens.
The ANC’s Brown admits: “Yes, we will put up rates in wealthy areas. I don’t want to lie. We really want to win Cape Town because this is a very divided city, people are divided by poverty and wealth. And it’s too beautiful to lose,” she said. – AFP