DA ‘goes in for kill’ in ANC heartland
IT sounds counterintuitive, but the DA is waging its biggest battle of Cape Town’s local elections in the heart of enemy territory.
Khayelitsha, with 400 000 residents, is entirely black, and nearly everyone who voted there in 2011 — 92.5% — put their cross next to an ANC candidate. That ensured that all 10 Khayelitsha wards have been represented by members of Cape Town’s official opposition for the past five years.
And that is the reason the township is the DA’s priority as it “goes in for the kill” on August 3, targeting a two-thirds majority in the City of Cape Town.
“Since the DA is trying to break through into the African electorate, and sees younger voters as the most available constituency, Khayelitsha is where it has to focus its attention,” said political analyst Anthony Butler.
Analyst Zamikhaya Maseti said: “Even in Gauteng they are investing much in Soweto, in areas like Kliptown and Tembisa. So the strategy this time around is to shed this image of a white party which is controlled by big business.”
Since the start of the campaign to return Patricia de Lille to the mayor’s office, the party has held numerous events in Khayelitsha.
It has even convinced Loyiso Nkohla, one of the two leaders of the Ses’khona People’s Rights Movement — notorious for emptying toilets in public places in sanitation protests — to join the party.
Yesterday, party leader Mmusi Maimane held another rally in the township, only a week after he attended two community meetings there and promised to return and “slaughter” for DA supporters — celebrate with them — if they helped the party to victory there.
DA deputy provincial leader Bonginkosi Madikizela said: “We know that the opposition is dead in the Western Cape but we can’t just rest and take things for granted. We are going all out. We are going in for the kill [because] we know the opposition is weak.”
The target for the election was a twothirds majority, which would make it easier to pass certain resolutions.
Masizole Mnqasela, a member of the provincial legislature but previously the DA’s first councillor in Khayelitsha, said: “There used to be a time where people were forced to take off DA T-shirts here . . . [now] we need to ensure we capitalise on the gains we have made.”
One of the blueshirted supporters at a De Lille rally last week was Nosi Dyonase, an unemployed home-care worker who lives with her sister and 10-yearold daughter. She liked the DA, she said, “because all of the changes in the City of Cape Town are about the DA”.
Undecided voters Nobahle Nquka and Shirley Cengimbo said they had just come to listen. Both unemployed, they have lived in Khayelitsha for 10 years, and houses and jobs are their priorities.
ANC Western Cape secretary Faiz Jacobs said Khayelitsha was the ANC’s base, so it made electoral sense for the DA to target it.
“The communities on the ground know what the failures of the DA’s delivery are,” he said. The ANC was also targeting nontraditional supporters in mainly coloured and white areas. “People can see through [the DA] elections ploy . . . we are confident that our people will come out in their numbers again and [vote] for the ANC because of failure of service delivery [by the DA] in those areas.”