The battle for control of Cape Town goes to the streets of Tafelsig — a poor coloured suburb of Mitchells Plain on the Cape Flats — in less than a fortnight in what is becoming a contest between mayor Helen Zille and the Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille.
Although the two are not candidates in the June 7 municipal by-election, both parties are investing heavily in the election.
If Zille’s Democratic Alliance recaptures the seat it lost to the ID on March 1, its coalition government will increase its working majority to two seats in the 210-seat Cape Town council. If the ID regains the seat it lost when its councillor defected to the DA, it will shore up its position on the council, where it had hoped to play the role of political broker.
This week DA leader Tony Leon became personally involved in door-to-door canvassing, accompanied by Cape minstrels and DA women wearing sweaters declaring “Vat Mitchells Plain terug [Take Mitchells Plain back]”.
Leon charged that people of Tafelsig had a chance “to express the outrage of the voters in Cape Town and the Western Cape at De Lille and her party for aligning with the African National Congress, voting for Nomaindia Mfeketo as mayor and then voting to retain Wallace Mgoqi as city manager.”
Last week the Cape High Court ruled that Mgoqi was out of a job.
Mfeketo and Mgoqi allegedly presided over what Leon described as “a thieves’ banquet” of corruption, mismanagement and enrichment for family and friends.
He said: “Even by the rather low standards of probity of the ANC as a whole, the ANC in Cape Town was extraordinarily bad and is alleged to have perpetrated some of the worst corruption in the nation in the shortest possible space of time.
“In all of this Patricia de Lille is on the wrong side. For a woman in a party which is supposed to fight corruption, it is both sad and pathetic to see how she has backed the ANC and its corrupt regime.”
The ID fought back, with its candidate, June Frans, going into the Tafelsig area to clean up the streets. The party said Sheval Arendse — who resigned from the ID in protest against the party’s vote for Mfeketo — had been sitting at home waiting for the by-election. “Arendse could have got the council to start cleaning up but he didn’t, so Mrs Frans has decided to do something about it,” said ID council caucus leader Simon Grindrod, who challenged Zille to stop evictions from council housing and water cut-offs.
He said his party had received calls from 150 people who had received final notices from lawyers for the city. “[Zille] should consider the hardship resulting from an emergency situation such as the icy temperatures that will impact upon the health of the poor.”
Grindrod also took aim at the DA’s council partners, the Freedom Front-Plus and the African Christian Democratic Party. “We are saying to the people in Tafelsig if you want a volkstaat, vote for the DA coalition. If you believe homosexuals should be locked up, vote for the DA coalition.”
In the March municipal poll the ID got 2 300 votes, just 96 more than the DA. The ANC trailed with 809. The ID split the vote — in 2000 the DA polled 4 333 votes to the ANC’s 1 108. The ANC is not standing this time.