Encouraged by signs that white and coloured voters in the Western Cape are increasingly casting their ballots for those they feel represent their interests — and not their race — the African National Congress is sending heavyweights into the province to bolster its campaign to secure a majority in the coming election.
The ANC election march in the Western Cape continues, with its national chairperson and the national Minister of Defence, Mosiuoa Lekota, out to conquer white voters over a cup of tea at a home in Vredenburg on the West Coast this weekend.
The third party heavyweight to tour the province in as many weeks, Lekota’s mission is also to win support for the ANC in Mitchell’s Plain and Atlantis, Cape Town’s largest coloured communities. In the last local government elections, these townships mostly returned New National Party or Democratic Alliance representatives.
”In the past we fought to consolidate our traditional bases and have not, to some extent, worked diligently in other communities,” said ANC MP Sue van der Merwe, who coordinates this drive in Cape Town.
”As a non-racial organisation we can’t ignore areas where we don’t have a traditional base,” she said.
While Western Cape ANC officials have expressed surprise at the hearty welcome for their president, Thabo Mbeki, in Rugby, a historically poor-white Cape Town suburb, Lekota’s home visit was arranged because of local white interest.
A Vredenburg ANC organiser said several whites had telephoned the local office after a round of pamphleteering: ”It is new that white people come to us openly”.
Lekota may just find fertile ground at Saturday’s house meeting with white voters, if Mbeki’s Rugby electioneering is anything to go by.
”What a fantastic president we have. No other president has come around to see us,” smiled Oom Jannie van der Spuy. He and Jannie Thiart excitedly spotted that the president already had an Afrikaner close to his heart — the bright orange frilly flower a little girl put in Mbeki’s buttonhole. It got them chatting about — what else? — rugby.
Would you vote for him? ”We would have to,” the ooms nodded.
Other stops were less obvious but nonetheless significant: the president called on Milky Town, a poor coloured community just outside Paarl, rather than Fairy Land, the ANC stronghold just across the road and had lunch with farmers in the traditionally NNP Boland.
Another key ANC canvassing theme emerged — national reconciliation and cooperation — as Mbeki pledged his party’s cooperation would continue after April 14.
While this cooperation has come under fire from the opposition DA, it is helping the ANC gain greater acceptability, if not necessarily votes, in white communities. ”[It] makes people more receptive,” explained one party official.
Similarly, strategic selections are found in Lekota’s weekend canvassing programme. It is hoped his time in Atlantis will help achieve what provincial party officials describe as ”the possibility of gaining a clear majority there”.
Since 1999, the party has consistently scored over 40% in the coloured dormitory town. In Mitchell’s Plain, support ranges from 18% in working class areas to 35% in better-off parts.
Cheryl Hendricks of the Centre for Conflict Resolution at the University of Cape Town says the coloured vote, the largest in the province, is historically split between the NNP in the working class and the ANC or Democratic Aliance among the middle classes.
”It’s a vote not necessarily on race, but interest,” she said, adding that coloured workers, previously protected by preferential labour practices, saw policies like affirmative action as a threat.
However, such fears had diminished significantly. While ”swart gevaar” election tactics remained, they were more subtle than in the past.
But translating potential into votes remains a challenge. ”There are many people who vote for the DA but complain to the ANC,” ANC Western Cape leader Ebrahim Rasool told a predominantly coloured and Muslim meeting in Rylands last week.
So, door-to-door canvassing and house meetings have become the ANC’s election tools alongside participation in public debates in predominately white communities and meetings with interest groups, like next week’s scheduled interaction with Stellenbosch academics.
”We do not pretend to have majority support in white communities,” said Van der Merwe. ”If we improve our vote then that would be a success.”