Smaller parties lick wounds

WHILE all eyes were on results of the DA and the ANC in Cape Town this week, behind the scenes small parties – many competing for the first time, – were poring over numbers to see whether they could get a single councillor elected.

A total of 36 parties contested the Mother City, although most only put up candidates in a handful of its 111 wards.

Despite only receiving a fraction of the vote of the DA and ANC, many new and previously unknown parties remained remarkably upbeat.

The Democratic Independent Party (DIP), lead by Anwar Adams, received 6 686 votes – 0.3 percent of all votes cast in the city.

But Adams – formerly of the Pan Africanist Congress, was optimistic, saying the DIP had made it into the top 10, and would likely win a councillor via proportional representation.

“We are the only new party in the top 10, and we find that phenomenal,” he said.

The Local People’s Party (LPP) – whose symbol is a green tree, received 2 638 votes, about 0.1 percent.

But its leader, Mark Klassens, was bullish about the future. “For a party that only started in April, we got many votes,” he said.

The LPP received most of its votes in ward 76, Lentegeur, where it won a respectable 7.6 percent of the vote, beating both the ANC and the EFF.

Cope, however, didn’t try to put a positive spin on the results. The party’s support plummeted in the city to only 0.25 percent, or 5 512 votes in total.

At the IEC’s provincial results centre on Thursday evening, Cope’s mayoral candidate Farouk Cassim didn’t try to sugarcoat the figures.

“The election was a tremendous success, but not so much for Congress of the People.”

jan.cronje@inl.co.za

Anwar Adams