Marianne Merten
Just 109 votes gave the African National Congress victory over the Democratic Alliance this week in the first Western Cape by-election since the ANC-New National Party provincial government took power.
The narrow win has led the DA to claim it has kept its support in the NNP rural stronghold of Grabouw. The NNP itself did not field a candidate.
“The interesting thing is that the NNP voters and it is basically an NNP area stuck with the DA. We kept our DA voters. We are satisfied with that,” said Phillip Grobler, Western Cape DA spokesperson.
However, the true test of whether NNP support for the DA is holding up may have to wait until the two forthcoming by-elections in the Overberg municipality. The NNP is understood to be contesting those elections, which will provide an idea of whether voters support the alliance or the individual parties within it. The ANC will not field a candidate.
The implications of the vote are also clouded by the very low turnout, just 35,9% of the 4 582 registered voters made their mark.
The Grabouw victory has bolstered the ANC’s confidence in shifting power balances elsewhere. Western Cape ANC leaders have instructed the party’s platteland councillors to demand representation on municipal executive committees. In December the ANC successfully claimed three seats on the Cape Town unicity executive committee.
Everyone knew it would be a tight race in Grabouw, 80km outside Cape Town, which constitutes Ward 9 of the Theewaterskloof (Caledon) council. In the December 2000 local government elections the ANC lost by 43 votes; 61 votes were spoilt. The previous ward councillor, local businessman Bruce Green of the NNP component of the DA, resigned, forcing the by-election under the electoral rules.
The by-election was the first test of the DA’s popularity since the withdrawal of the NNP last year to join the ANC. It came as some disgruntled former NNP members, still representing the DA as councillors, are openly courting senior NNP leaders. As a result the DA is set to decide on disciplinary action during this weekend’s provincial management meeting.
The DA interprets the Grabouw poll as showing that those councillors wanting to rejoin the NNP would be unlikely to take their voters along with them.
Defection laws, expected to be in place by the middle of this year, would enable former NNP members to formally rejoin the party. Since NNP councillors were elected under the DA banner, if they leave they will lose their seats.
For the ANC the by-election was an assessment of how popular the new cooperative provincial government was. It was also a test of its African-coloured solidarity strategy, endorsed at its provincial congress last October.
In the run-up to Wednesday’s by-election both the ANC and DA pulled out all the stops. The DA brought in senior party officials and MPs to the small town last weekend; the ANC employed 10 people as permanent canvassers to go from door to door and bused people to the voting stations.
The ANC has rejected suggestions that there was anything untoward in this. “The majority of our voters are poor people. They don’t have cars like the DA supporters,” said ANC provincial spokesperson Gert Witbooi.
Of those who cast their ballot 821 voted for the ANC and 712 for the DA. The United Democratic Movement logged just more than 220 votes and the Cape People’s Congress, which has one proportional representation seat on the council, scored 142 votes.
In the wake of the campaign, local police are left to investigate charges of assault and pointing a firearm laid by the ANC against the UDM.