South Africa’s ruling African National Congress is ”confident” of winning the metropolitan city of Cape Town in March, the only metropolitan area in the country that eluded it electorally in the last municipal poll in 2000, says the party’s deputy secretary general, Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele.
Local government elections around the country are being held on March 1.
Speaking at a briefing on Thursday — ahead of the January 8 ANC rally in Athlone, Cape Town, where President Thabo Mbeki will launch the local government election campaign nationally — the deputy secretary general emphasised that she has worked in the area (Cape Town and the Western Cape) for the past four months and ”the ANC is growing”.
The launch will be attended by ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma, although what role he will play in the event will be determined in discussions between Zuma and ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe.
Mthembi-Mahanyele said she does not see it as a contradiction that Zuma will attend the rally after the recent decision by the ANC’s national executive committee to suspend him from participating in structures.
Zuma, who is facing both a rape charge and corruption charges later this year in the Durban High Court, will ”be there” at the launch, said Mthembi-Mahanyele.
Meanwhile, Western Cape provincial ANC chairperson James Nqculu said the party has historically done well in African black areas of Cape Town and it will continue to do so. In other areas where the Democratic Alliance has done well in the past — such as white areas — he said the DA is ”not the same” as it was in 2000. A number of cadres from that party — which previously opposed the ANC — are now working within the ANC and fighting for it.
Minorities, including whites and coloureds, are increasingly moving in the direction of the ANC, he said.
In Cape Town, the DA has put up former Western Cape provincial minister Helen Zille. Last time, the DA won Cape Town with nearly 60% of the vote, but it lost power through defections from the New National Party, which put the ANC into power in 2002.
ANC provincial secretary Mcebisi Skwatsha said mayoral candidates for metro areas — including for Cape Town — will be selected by the party’s national executive committee and announced by President Thabo Mbeki. This is expected on January 10. Other Western Cape mayoral candidates have been selected by the provincial executive. They include three female candidates, Skwatsha said.
While it is, therefore, not clear that sitting ANC Cape Town mayor Nomaindia Mfeketo will be the candidate, it is widely expected that she will, indeed, lead the ANC municipal campaign in Cape Town. — I-Net Bridge