Marianne Merten Racial divides were entrenched in the elections for the Cape Town unicity, where the Democratic Alliance demolished the African National Congress outside the city’s townships. White and coloured Capetonians from Constantia, to working-class communities on the Cape Flats, all voted for the DA. In contrast the party scored just a few hundred votes in those township wards where it decided to field a candidate against the ANC. The ANC won all township wards, but scored only two victories in coloured suburbs: Rylands/Crawford on the Cape Flats and Maccassar, near Gordon’s Bay.
Overall in the metro the DA won 53,13% of the votes (749 157) compared to the ANC’s 38,07% (536 747). The DA has a comfortable majority in the new Cape Town unicity council. However, the ANC managed to bolster its presence through the proportional representation seats, which are determined by the number of total votes cast for a political party. The unicity will be run by a 10-strong executive committee to be elected with a speaker next Thursday. Race has always been crucial in politics in the Western Cape, where coloured communities constitute half the population. As far back as 1994 the National Party used “swart gevaar” tactics to gain votes in the coloured communities. This year the DA deployed a similar, if more sophisticated, strategy with its “Keep the ANC Out” radio and poster campaigns. Political observers say the DA has managed to capitalise on the “gatvol” factor: many of the minority groups feel disgruntled with the economy and the government’s overall performance, feel less protected from crime now and perceive access to basic services as worsening. Personal freedoms and rights under the Constitution generally rank far down on the list of priorities. In this context the ANC’s campaign around better service delivery in poorer areas, a fair allocation of resources and transformation failed to capture hearts and minds. Instead, election watchers say, the party lost many of the gains it made in last year’s national election in the Cape Flats coloured working-class communities and rural areas. Voting patterns clearly reflect the racial divisions. Prominent ANC KTC township councillor Gladstone Ntamo was elected with 6?477 votes compared to the 31 ballots cast for his DA rival. Langa township ward 51 went to the ANC with more than 6?000 votes. The nearest rival, an independent, polled 617 votes, the Pan Africanist Congress 200 and the DA 104 votes. In contrast, DA member Pieter Venter, who resigned from the ANC because of his unhappiness with the ruling party’s policy on Zimbabwe, bagged 4?794 votes compared with the ANC’s 2?379 in the plush seafront suburb of Camps Bay.
In Durbanville, in northern Cape Town, the DA obtained 10?888 votes, its nearest rival the African Christian Democratic Party 450 votes and the ANC 100 votes. The gangland of Manenberg on the Cape Flats was split into three wards: two joined with township areas went to the ANC, while the third was mopped up by the DA. At the time of going to press the estimated voter turnout in many white residential areas hit the 70% mark and ranged between 40% to 50% in coloured communities.
In a surprise development, the turnout in townships dropped significantly from previous national and local polls to vary between 40% and 55%. This low turnout in Cape Town’s townships, described by political analysts as a protest non-vote, has eroded the traditional ANC strongholds. “Clearly [blacks] didn’t vote for the DA. Its message was overtly negative and sometimes racist,” said Sean Jacobs, a senior analyst at the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa). “In the end they had a choice: ANC or ANC and they decided not to choose ANC.”
For the Western Cape ANC it is back to the drawing board. Sources say they perhaps had focused too much on gaining the potential swing vote of disgruntled white and coloured voters while taking its traditional support base for granted. Head of Idasa’s political information and monitoring service Richard Calland agrees. “[The ANC] broke the golden rule of politics: get your core voter! It is a wake-up call. [It] has to treat it as an opportunity to listen more carefully.”
Officials also quietly admit there was still a high level of anti-black sentiments among particularly the coloured communities. The ANC’s anti-privilege strategy failed to unite voters across the colour line. Political scientist Keith Gottschalk from the University of the Western Cape said he was surprised the ANC did not make more of the gains it secured for women like the domestic violence protection order or the new maintenance courts. The majority of coloured working-class voters are women. But the DA now has to prove it can deliver better than the ANC. Gottschalk said the DA knew its credibility was on the line, particularly because it wanted to “show off Cape Town as a success”. However, this still requires the transfer of public resources to the poorest areas despite the racial polarisation where DA stands for white and rich and ANC for black and poor.