New parties gear up for national elections

‘The type of leaders that the party elects are people who have no political background but ordinary citizens and community leaders who are ‘gatvol’ about the status quo’

Three of the province’s smaller political parties are hoping to make a big impact in the 2024 general elections and are launching new branches to bolster their presence.

The Patriotic Alliance, Northern Alliance and ActionSA are all launching leadership structures in the Eastern Cape to widen their footprint.

The PA will also be contesting in the national elections for the second time after celebrating its 10th year in existence this year, while the Northern Alliance and ActionSA, both established in 2020, will be contesting national elections for the first time.

In the past seven months, the PA managed to launch 19 branches in the Nelson Mandela Bay region, as the party steadily grows its membership across the board.

Nelson Mandela Bay PA councillor Bradly Murray said the latest of the 11 branches established this year was in Pearston in the Karoo.

“The type of leaders that the party elects are people who have no political background but ordinary citizens and community leaders who are ‘gatvol’ about the status quo.”

Murray said the party had made inroads nationally, growing in other provinces with the intention of doing the same in strategic areas in the Eastern Cape.

He said so far the party had established branches in Cradock, Graaff-Reinet and Makhanda among other places and boasted an 18,000-strong membership in the province.

“Nationally, we have more than 300,000 signed up members,” he said.

“Our target is to have 58,000 members in Nelson Mandela Bay and 140,000 in the province because we want to have representation in the legislature and put pressure on government at that level.”

Meanwhile, the Northern Alliance is promising “new developments” in the coalition government in the Bay, which would benefit the people of the area.

Party president Gary van Niekerk said the criticism for its failure to champion service delivery in the northern areas was completely warranted and they needed to do more for the people who helped put them in council.

“This service delivery issue for the people of the northern areas is one of the reasons we are fighting with the DA because they hold most of the service delivery portfolios.

“This is the same problem that will see some developments [in the coalition] in the coming weeks,” he said.

The party made the threat to withdraw from the coalition in February, after it brought Stellenbosch University electricity expert Christo Nicholls to present strategies that would see a possible end to power blackouts in the city.

However, the proposal was not heard, after it emerged that it could not go straight to council before it was presented to officials of the relevant standing committee.

ActionSA Eastern Cape leader Athol Trollip said the party had moved to form a provincial executive committee (PEC) in the province, which would be tasked with the management and co-ordination of ActionSA’s activities in the Eastern Cape.

“There are eight [regions], two metros and six district municipalities.

“Each region must have an interim regional co-ordinator (ActionSA now has five) and subregional co-ordinators are appointed for each municipality or subregion of a metro. We now have 18.

“My plans are that as soon as we have appointed regional co-ordinators in all eight regions we will establish an interim PEC,” Trollip said.