DA aiming to slash ruling party’s support in East Cape to below 60%
The DA wants to reduce the ANC’s support in the Eastern Cape to below 60% in the 2024 general elections.
However, the ruling party received 69.26% of the vote in the province in 2019, making this a huge task for the blue party.
Speaking after the DA’s Eastern Cape council in Bedford yesterday, its provincial leader, Andrew Whitfield, said it was strong organisationally and planned to use that strength to claw at the ANC’s support base to get it below the 60% threshold.
“With respect to the elections, we looked at election figures and the polling itself is looking positive.
“We achieved about 15.01% [in the Eastern Cape] in 2019 and 15.25% during the 2021 local government elections and we’re looking very good on the polling.
“Our mission is to bring the ANC under 60% in the Eastern Cape.
“Realistically, [in] the Eastern Cape, despite having the highest rate of violent crime and unemployment, the ANC remains resilient in rural areas.
“Today, we’ve discussed and developed a strategy to target those rural communities as well as certain other ANC strongholds in the province.
“We’ll do what we can to contest the ANC wherever it exists,” Whitfield said.
Last month, DA leader John Steenhuisen announced the party’s intention to form a “moonshot pact” with other parties with similar values to stop a potential ANC-EFF coalition from running SA.
The ANC and EFF have formed an alliance in Gauteng in a bid to take over that province’s metros.
Whitfield said the moonshot pact was being co-ordinated at a national level and a conference would be held soon at which the leaders of various political parties would meet.
Provincial leaders would then find ways to collaborate.
“In previous elections, we have collaborated with political parties as a tactic where certain parties can’t be represented in voting stations.
“Having been with a number of these parties in Nelson Mandela Bay and collaborated previously, our door is open to those collaborations once the moonshot pact has been held to try and bring down the ANC below 60%,” he said.
Whitfield said polls showed the ANC now polling below 60% in the Eastern Cape, which he said was a positive sign.
During the 2021 local government elections, the ANC received 62.99% of the vote.
However, people appeared to vote differently in municipal and general elections, which was evident in the number of coalition governments now running metropolitan municipalities.
Asked by The Herald whether the new kid on the block in the province — ActionSA, whose Eastern Cape leader, Athol Trollip, is a former DA heavyweight — was a threat to his party, Whitfield said the DA was not looking over its shoulder.
Formed in August 2020, ActionSA contested the local government elections in the Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal municipalities.
Last year, Trollip was announced as its Eastern Cape leader.
“Our message is to defeat the ANC and the voting public needs to realise the DA is the only party that can credibly do that,” Whitfield said.
“We’re not looking over our shoulders or looking in the rear-view mirror.
“We’re focusing as the new provincial executive on setting our own agenda and communicating what we do and not pointing out the faults of other political parties.”