Major parties gun for Western Cape, Gauteng
The DA, ANC and EFF are all aiming to get a grip on the country’s economic centres
THE stage is set for a bruising battle for the country’s economic powerhouses, Gauteng and the Western Cape.
Yesterday the ante was upped with calls to stop any ANC-EFF coalition as one of the polls suggested that the DA may lose the Western Cape.
The DA’s premier candidate, Alan Winde, during the last leg of his whistle-stop tour to 30 communities in Athlone and Retreat, urged voters to keep the ANC and EFF from the province’s government.
Winde also recorded video for social media where he urged voters to go all out and keep the Western Cape under the DA. “We can’t allow any kind of coalition (of) ANC-EFF...”
This happened as the ANC, which is the official opposition in the province, did not hold any major activities other than ensuring logistical issues were sorted out ahead of today’s polls.
The province has been a battlefield as the parties sought to win the hearts and minds of voters and even roped in their bigwigs on the campaign trail.
This took place against the backdrop of DA internal polls which projected the party may get less than 50%, while the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) last week put its percentage at 44.6% and the ANC on 27.8%.
Winde said during his whistle-stop tour they had been engaging communities to remind the people to go and vote to keep the ANC and EFF away from control of the Western Cape.
“With the ANC in charge, all we can expect is failure and corruption,” Winde said. “That is why it is so important that each and every voter heads to the polls to vote to keep the ANC and EFF out of our province,” he said.
But the ANC’s head of communications, Lionel Adendorf, said his party was excited about their election campaign, and that they would do well at the polls.
Adendorf said the ANC had interacted with 70% of the Western Cape voters during their door-to-door campaigns and through their 14 000 volunteers and national leaders.
He also said they were not interested in what the polls were saying.
“We know we spoke to the voters, encouraging them to vote and gave answers to what they wanted to know. That will result in better results.”
Adendorf said coalition talks were not yet a consideration prior to the elections, despite polls suggesting a neck-and-neck contest.
“We will make considerations after the elections on what has to be done.”
He took a swipe at the DA’s statement on possible ANC-EFF coalition and corruption, saying it (the DA) was in coalition with the red berets in Tshwane and Johannesburg.
In Gauteng, the DA and EFF are determined to force the ANC’s vote down to below 50%, as was the case in the 2016 local elections, which saw the ruling party losing power in Johannesburg and Tshwane.
ANC provincial head of elections Lebogang Maile was adamant his party would retain power in Gauteng for the sixth time.
“We are ready. We have deployed more than 40 000 volunteers who will be working in all 2 771 voting stations in Gauteng,” Maile said.
Maile reiterated that his party in Gauteng would target a majority victory. He dismissed the IRR’s poll that the ANC would obtain below 50% of the vote, describing it as “DA-orchestrated propaganda”. Maile predicted that the Gauteng ANC would get more than 60% of the vote.
EFF Gauteng provincial chairperson Mandisa Mashego did not want to predict the results, but said her party would “emerge victorious”.
“We do not do forecasts. Objective analyses were made by different research groups. All of them found the EFF was the only growing party,” Mashego said.
Equally confident was DA Gauteng leader John Moodey, who concurred with the forecasts of the IRR on the outcome of the elections in Gauteng.
“We are going to bring the ANC vote down to below 50% in Gauteng,” Moodey said.