The ANC was confident that the Cape Town metro was winnable in the local government elections, its head of elections Ngoako Ramathlodi said on Thursday.
“We are very comfortable with all the metros. We think Cape Town is within reach,” he told journalists at the party’s Luthuli House headquarters in Johannesburg.
“We are going to storm the Bastille … We are comfortable with an overall victory across the country,” he said.
This included the Nelson Mandela Bay metro in the Eastern Cape, on which the Democratic Alliance has also set its sights.
The ANC’s head of organising and campaigns, Fikile Mbalula, who is also minister of sport, said the opposition’s hopes in Nelson Mandela Bay rode on independent candidates.
“I think all and sundry, and those who were hoping the ANC would fall in the metro, were relying on the independents,” he said.
However, he said most independents had returned to the ANC fold and were campaigning for the party.
Many ANC members opted to go it alone and run independently when they were left off the party’s candidate lists. There was widespread discontent over the list process in the province, with the ANC having to defend itself from court action brought by its own members.
Mbalula said the ANC would continue campaigning till the “last hour” to ensure its victory.
A ‘lot of surprises’ in this election
Meanwhile, the DA’s Eastern Cape leader Athol Trollip said ANC members wanted to “teach their party a lesson” by voting for opposition parties.
Trollip, who was campaigning in the rural areas around Port St Johns, said he had met many ANC members who said they would wearing their ANC T-shirts over Democratic Alliance T-shirts when they cast their ballots.
“Many ANC members have said to me that they will vote tactically for the DA as a way of teaching their party a lesson,” Trollip said on Thursday.
“They say they will arrive at the voting booths wearing their ANC T-shirts, but underneath they will have a blue, DA shirt.
“I think we can expect a lot of surprises in this election.”
Trollip expects the DA to win at least four municipalities in the Eastern Cape, with the possibility of a few surprises.
“I think we will take Port Elizabeth through a coalition with another party,” he said.
“We will definitely win Coega, which we won in 2000.
“We will keep Baviaans, and Camdeboo municipality in Graaff-Reinet is vulnerable.”
Trollip said the party was winning over enormous support from young people in the province.
“What I have found at our meetings is that many young people, between the age of 18 and 30, are coming to support us. It’s a very positive sign for the future.”
Trollip was met with singing and dancing supporters at the Mtumbane village on a hill above the ocean in Port St Johns.
He said during the meeting people should not believe the ANC when it said the DA would bring back apartheid and take away their grants.
“Many from the Transkei and the Eastern Cape take a overnight bus to Cape Town because they know there is work there and there are opportunities there,” he said, speaking in isiXhosa.
“That says a lot about the government in the Eastern Cape.
“People should not have to leave the Eastern Cape. There are many opportunities here to create jobs in tourism, agriculture and timber.” – Sapa