Next week’s by-election in Tafelsig, Cape Town, may be close, but the Democratic Alliance will win, DA leader Tony Leon predicted on Friday.
A DA win in the ward 82 by-election will double its slender majority on the city council.
The by-election was called after the resignation of then Independent Democrats councillor Sheval Arendse, who had won a narrow victory in the March 1 election.
Writing in his weekly newsletter on the DA website, Leon said Arendse quit his party and his post shortly after the council narrowly elected Helen Zille as Cape Town’s new mayor on March 15, over the opposition of the African National Congress and ID.
”He was disgusted at the way in which ID leader Patricia de Lille broke her promise to the voters and backed the ANC’s Nomaindia Mfeketo to return as unicity mayor,” Leon said.
”Mr Arendse could have waited until the floor-crossing window opened next year to change parties, but he did not want to spend another day longer in the service of the autocratic De Lille and her alter ego Simon Grindrod [ID mayoral candidate].
”He also knew that the voters of South Africa hate floor-crossing, and that Capetonians had voted against every single ward councillor who had crossed the floor in previous years.
”And so Mr Arendse chose the more honourable course. He gave up his seat, and joined the DA.
”He is now the DA candidate for the ward, and he has put his political future, and that of the city, in the hands of the ordinary people of his community.
”And let me make a prediction, as a politician who has worked on more than a few by-election campaigns: the vote on June 7 may be close, but the DA is going to win,” Leon said.
The fact that the ANC had chosen not to run a candidate in Tafelsig, and to back the ID’s campaign instead, again showed the extent to which the ID had become the ANC’s surrogate.
The ID’s main problem in this election was that it was running against the DA’s positive record of delivery, and Mayor Zille’s many achievements thus far.
”After just twelve weeks in office, the multi-party government has turned Cape Town around, putting it back on the path of good governance, expanding delivery and economic progress,” he said.
In Tafelsig itself, Zille had launched a housing project, rooted in a cooperation agreement between the city and three major banks, which will provide housing finance to those families earning between R3500 and R7000 a month.
Over time, this policy, extended across the city, could enable the multi-party government to put 100 000 Capetonians into decent housing, Leon said. — Sapa