The ruling African National Congress overturned a huge Democratic Alliance majority in a municipal ward in Uitenhage on Wednesday, winning the ward by-election by 248 votes and 48% of the vote.
Ward 43 — which is a largely coloured area but has about 10% black African working- and middle-class inhabitants and is centred on the suburb of Rosedale in Uitenhage — was won in the 2000 municipal election by the DA, which then included the New National Party, with a huge majority. At that stage the ANC won just 18% of the vote while the DA had 74%.
This time it was 48,6% to the ANC to the DA’s 39,4% and the NNP’s 7,4%. The African Christian Democratic Party gained just 1,3% and an independent received 2,4%. There were 17 spoilt papers.
The result is significant as the ward forms part of the old coloured House of Representatives Swartkops constituency of former Labour Party leader Allan Hendrickse, who joined the ANC at the end of his political career.
The Eastern Cape result confirms a by-election trend set in rural areas of the Western Cape where the ANC has been gaining ground on the DA. The DA recently retained a seat in Swellendam but with a reduced majority and lost a seat in the Cloetesville coloured township of Stellenbosch to the ANC.
The overall trend indicates that it will be difficult for the DA — stripped of the NNP — to win back the Western Cape province in next year’s national election. The NNP, however, has been reduced in the Eastern Cape to a spent force.
Peter Hendrickse, son of Allan and an ANC MP, said on Thursday: ”The tide has turned … it shows that people expect that the ANC is the only effective vehicle to bring about change in South Africa and to improve the living conditions of people.”
DA MP Donald Lee was not available for comment this morning but late last night DA spokesperson Bobby Stevenson said his party would be talking to the returning officer about an alleged decision to allow people not on the voters’ roll to vote. — I-Net Bridge