The New National Party lost the Stellenbosch by-election in the coloured working-class community of Cloetesville to the African National Congress this week, despite a hard campaign.
The NNP’s traditional stronghold went to the Democratic Alliance in the December 2000 municipal poll courtesy of the Democratic Party-NNP alliance at the time.
This week’s loss may foreshadow a bleak future for the party, now on its own after last year’s municipal defection period, which allowed its councillors to withdraw from the DA without losing their seats. The NNP has failed to recapture even those wards the DA gained through its support in December 2000, either by not contesting seats or failing to win sufficient support in those it has contested.
The NNP lost its Swellendam seat to the DA in March after recapturing it in the municipal defections. In May the NNP did not field a candidate in another NNP stronghold, Grassy Park on the Cape Flats.
The ANC won Wednesday’s by-election in Stellenbosch by four votes over the DA, garnering 386 votes to the DA’s 382 and the NNP’s 336. But the NNP regained some ground compared with its dismal showing in the Swellendam by-election.
Ward polls are generally regarded as election scene-setters, so Wednesday’s by-election confirms earlier indications that the race for next year’s election in the Western Cape will be dominated by the ANC and the DA. Recent by-elections indicate the Western Cape race will be close: the four-vote ANC victory came after the DA’s 65-vote victory in Swellendam, with 572 votes against the ANC’s 507 and the NNP’s 298, and the ANC’s 109-vote victory over the DA in Grabouw last year, with 821 votes to the DA’s 712.
In the other Stellenbosch ward up for grabs on Wednesday, the DA trounced the NNP with 713 votes against 265 to retain its seat in the affluent, overwhelmingly white Paradyskloof area. But voter turnout dropped from 68% in December 2000 to just over 35% this time.
On Thursday the NNP blamed negative campaigning by the DA and low voter turnout for its loss.
The ANC won the other nine by-elections across the country, which had low voter turnouts ranging from 16% to 26%.