As the last hours of the 15-day floor-crossing period ticked away on Tuesday, the Democratic Alliance was still holding onto power in ten local councils in the Western Cape.
Before the defection period kicked in on October 8, the DA — according to its own figures — held 16 of the 30 councils in the province.
The rest were either controlled by, or shared with, the African National Congress. With the Tuesday midnight deadline approaching, the DA still controlled ten councils, and the ANC/New National Party coalition 19.
Only one council — Laingsburg, whose six members were neatly split between the DA and the ANC — was still shared. The NNP continued on Tuesday to make capital out of an ongoing trickle of defections from the DA, including the mayor of Swellendam, and more floor-crossers in the Cape Town unicity. Cape Town was the first and most important council to fall to the coalition.
Other major gains for the ANC and NNP have been Drakenstein, the largest rural municipality in the province, and the town of Stellenbosch, where the ANC will have its conference in December. The DA on Tuesday still retained a swathe of South Cape municipalities including George, Mossel Bay and Langeberg, covering the town of Riversdal.
An NNP deputy chairmen in the Western Cape, Pierre Uys, said on Tuesday that while it would have liked to oust the DA in every council, the NNP was ”very pleased” with the results. ”We’re very happy that on the first day we could take the city of Cape Town, and then take if from there,” he said.
Asked about the relatively large numbers of former NNP members who had stayed in the DA rather than return to their original political home, he said people had stayed for ”different reasons”, and not necessarily for love of the DA.
Some had argued that they were honouring the mandate of the voters, while other were intimidated or pressurised. There were still ”NNP people” in the DA, and it would not be easy for them to be there ”because in their hearts they believe in the direction we’re going in, and what we are doing”.
DA Western Cape chairman Theuns Botha said: ”One is never happy with what you’ve lost. You can never be happy when somebody leaves your party. ”But we are happy in the sense that the poison that was within us is now not with us any more. After this walkover we are sitting now with people who want to be part of the DA.”
He said the NNP had reclaimed ”less than a third” of the councillors it brought into the DA, giving it only about ten per cent of all the councillors in the Western Cape. ”Surprise, surprise… we are well and alive, and we are marching to 2004 to take back what’s been stolen from us.” – Sapa