/ 29 April 2011

Post floor-crossing, Holomisa fancies his party’s chances

Post Floor Crossing

The United Democratic Movement (UDM) is in decline — but that is no reason not to vote for it, says its leader, Bantu Holomisa in an interview.

How many wards and municipalities are controlled by the UDM?
We do not control any. We used to control King Sabata Dalindyebo [KSD] municipality [which includes Mthatha]. We currently have 100 councillors countrywide from the 2006 local government elections so I hope to get more this time around. We should improve on that.

The classic example is in the municipalities that are currently controlled by the ANC [such as] in Port Elizabeth. We have received new members and we have been campaigning there intensively for the past three months.

The party has been losing support. Why should voters vote for a party in decline?
There is no denial on that but that doesn’t mean that’s the end of the UDM. All political parties have ups and downs. Even the ANC has its own ups and downs. At one stage it was near extinction.

In 2009 the UDM was declining because we were deprived of financial resources and human resources, essentially due to the floor-crossing legislation. We had to fight that legislation and we are happy now that we are in ascendancy once again.

People are coming from the ANC, DA [Democratic Alliance] and ID [Independent Democrats], so this proves that people are beginning to take the UDM as a better option.

What can the UDM offer that other parties cannot?
The most important thing is to do things in a disciplined way, starting from the budget. The UDM is campaigning for the budget to be released immediately after the minister of finance has announced it. Municipalities and provincial government must get to work and render services instead of waiting for the provincial and local governments to tell us the same story in a different language. This is not a federal state; we have to cut down the unnecessary bureaucracy.

How is the UDM structuring its campaign? Are you focusing on mass rallies or door-to-door campaigns?
The key here is door-to-door campaigns. Our comrades have done very well this time around. I am impressed with the way they are operating. We also have road shows, then rallies here and there.

What are the main points of your manifesto
We are saying let’s go back to the basics. This means we must do proper planning and budgeting and instil discipline. With the current set-up there is too much waste and we are saying anyone who is misusing or defrauding the municipality, whether you are a councillor or an official, we will not compromise. Their fate will be decided by the court.

We need a disciplined nation. Currently people are building homes anywhere. We can’t let things go on like that — someone must take responsibility and say “in this country we have laws and those laws must be implemented”.

The main point we are carrying to the people is that the responsibility of local government should not be the sole job of local councillors. The national and provincial government must lead in providing proper infrastructure because we still have extraordinary backlogs and imbalances in rural areas and townships.

The party’s biggest achievement was winning the King Sabata Dalindyebo municipality. How did you lose it to the ANC and how do you plan to win it back?
The ANC used the floor-crossing legislation to sabotage us and we ended up losing that municipality. They even applied sanctions — they would delay the budget. Instead of releasing the budget early, we used to receive the budget in August. This caused a delay in issuing tenders.

But we did very well at that stage, when we were in charge of KSD. I think the ANC did not take it kindly that we were beginning to deliver services. They realised that if they allowed that they would end up ­losing the area forever. We are working on winning back the municipality. We have new leaders in that area and we are continuing with our door-to-door campaigns.

How many municipalities will the UDM be contesting and which do you feel you could win?
I don’t have those statistics but I can tell you that we are contesting more than 200 municipalities countrywide. We never contested more than five wards in Port Elizabeth before because we knew we didn’t have any chance of winning, but today we are contesting all 61 wards.