W Cape poll win not in the bag for DA
The battle for the coloured vote in the Western Cape has intensified, with numerous small parties criss-crossing the province, hoping to eat into the DA’s traditional support base.
The province’s citizens, who have largely voted for the DA in past elections, have more options now, and the official opposition would do well not to underestimate the newcomers.
The Patriotic Alliance (PA), ActionSA and Rise Mzansi all spent time this week seeking to attract voters in the province. Tourism minister Patricia de Lille’s GOOD party could add spice to the fight, while the ruling ANC is hoping to make a better showing this time.
The PA’s announcement that its leader, Gayton McKenzie, would compete for the province’s premiership comes after the party made inroads in recent by-elections, snatching support from historically DA strongholds.
Analysts agree the Western Cape election outcome could be far more interesting than expected. They argue that the DA cannot afford to rest on its laurels or take its traditional support base for granted.
“By-election results in the Western Cape suggest the DA is in trouble in outlying areas, but we have little data from the City of Cape Town,” electoral analyst Wayne Sussman said.
While it is unclear whether the DA is at risk of losing its majority, its support peaked in the 2014 provincial poll with 59% of the vote and has since declined. That prompted a changing of the guard within the party as it seeks to regain its traditional constituency. Still, its leadership under John Steenhuisen has yet to be tested in a national or provincial ballot.
“The DA is facing renewed pressure from the PA, which is growing, and there are also new parties targeting the Western Cape like ActionSA and Rise Mzansi,” electoral analyst Paul Berkowitz said.
“The DA’s support has been decreasing for some time and we just don’t know if the party has won back the confidence of its traditional support base.”
In January, Business Day published an internal DA poll that suggested the party, which has won the provincial election since 2009 on solid support from the coloured community, might be affected by its perceived support for Israel in the war with Hamas in Gaza.
Some believe the party’s ambiguity on the conflict could cost it votes on May 29.
But the party seems unperturbed about potentially losing the coloured vote, prompting smaller opposition parties campaigning in the province to say its head is in the sand.
In an interview with Business Day early in the year, the DA said local issues were more likely to determine political party support in the national and provincial elections in the Western Cape than a position on the Israel-Hamas war. This, it said, had emerged from the polling it had conducted among its support base.
According to the 2022 census, the Western Cape has a total population of 7.4-million, 42% of whom are coloured, 39% African and 16.4% white. In the 2019 elections, the DA won 55.45% of the provincial vote.
The most recent polls indicate the ANC will struggle to gain an outright national majority to run the country alone, opening the door for coalitions in provincial governments and the national government. The DA is expected to play a pivotal role in those coalitions, but that could be complicated should it haemorrhage black votes.
The party has lost senior black leaders in the past few months. Gauteng’s long-serving leader, Khume Ramulifho, has resigned from the party to join new political outfit Rise Mzansi.
Others believe the DA has not been sufficiently forthright in its position on the Israel-Hamas war — among them former member Ghaleb Cachalia, who resigned in January after failing to comply with party orders that only its international relations & co-operation spokesperson, Emma Powell, could speak on the Gaza war.
Cachalia believes Israel’s killing of more than 30,000 Palestinians is tantamount to
genocide, an issue that has yet to be decided by the International Court of Justice on the basis of an application by SA.
The DA has called on Israel to uphold the Geneva Convention’s condemnation of indiscriminate bombing but has also upheld the right of Israel to defend itself after Hamas attacked Israeli civilians on October 7. The DA has stated that it believed in a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine and that the two parties needed to come to the peace table as quickly as possible.
Steenhuisen said in an interview in January that the party hadn’t seen any impact of its position on the war on its voters. “Voters are far more concerned about the issues that matter to them here in SA: crime, electricity shortages, unemployment shortages and a failing education system. Those are the issues that matter to voters and those are the issues we will continue to focus on.”
Political analyst Ntsikelelo Breakfast said he believed the DA’s track record of governance and service delivery in the province would be the important factor for voters and agreed that local issues were more likely to affect voting patterns than developments on the international scene.
“The political reality the DA must deal with is the extent to which the party has allowed their black (not just coloured) support to inform party policies, culture, identities of leaders and structures,” said political analyst and Tshwane University of Technology vice-chair Prof Tinyiko Maluleke.
“That is the question/crisis the DA has been saddled with for a long time.
“Their apparently growing black and coloured support has not always been reflected in the culture, leadership and policies of the party,” he said.
THE DA SAID LOCAL ISSUES WERE MORE LIKELY TO DETERMINE SUPPORT IN THE ELECTIONS IN THE WESTERN CAPE