OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Saturday
INDIAN communities in South Africa have shunned the African National Congress (ANC) in this week’s local government elections, pushed by a perception that the ruling party cares only about black people, analysts said.
The community, with many families here for generations, numbers about 1.2 million people, or close to three percent of the population.
The country’s two poorest Indian areas, Phoenix and Chatsworth in Durban, fell convincingly to the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), as did the predominantly Indian area of Meerbank.
“The Democratic Alliance has made strong inroads in the Indian communities,” political analyst Kiru Naidoo said, adding that it did so by playing on ethnic fears the ruling ANC had ignored.
“It ran a very aggressive campaign focusing on crime and security, and also on unemployment and affirmative action, issues that affect the Indian community.
“So it has been fertile ground for the DA to move in on a fairly alarmist political platform.”
Naidoo said there was “a very real sense of marginalisation, a minority psychosis which appeared to have gripped the Indian community since 1994” when South Africa became a democracy.
“They were fed the crumbs off the apartheid table. It polarised black and Indian people. The state succeeded in depoliticising Indians though there were pockets of resistance.”
Naidoo said poor Indians were still better off than their African counterparts but felt little has been done for them in the past six years of ANC rule.
“There is this perception that they have been left out of the cold and the DA has become this broad church for the disenchanted.”
Vasu Gounden, a former anti-apartheid activist, said the Indian community had since 1994 become increasingly wary of the ANC.
“It is an insecure community. It has a perception, which is not real, that it is being discriminated against.”
It is something that is unlikely to be appeased by a warning that prominent KwaZulu-Natal ANC politician S’bu Ndebele sounded to people who had voted for the DA after the ANC failed to win more than 43% of the vote in Durban.
“When it comes to service delivery, we will start with the people who voted for us and you will be last,” he said. – AFP