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Final push for ANC, DA, EFF before elections

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Jacob Zuma on song in Nelson Mandela Bay. Picture: Nosipiwo Manona
Jacob Zuma on song in Nelson Mandela Bay. Picture: Nosipiwo Manona

It is time to bring out the cannons. 

With just 10 days of campaigning left before next week’s local government elections, political parties are pulling out all the stops to conquer new ground, defend territory already held and secure roles as kingmakers. 

For the ANC and the DA, which have poured hundreds of millions of rands into this campaign, the key battlegrounds will be in the Gauteng and Eastern Cape metros. 

President Jacob Zuma spent the past two days amassing ANC support in Nelson Mandela Bay, culminating in a rally in Port Elizabeth.

Turning up the volume on his racially charged rhetoric earlier in the week, Zuma told the crowd they should not vote for the DA because it was a white party. 

‘The DA was born of the National Party, which killed a lot of our people,’ he said. ‘The National Party has a child – the DA – which came out hating the ANC from its mother’s womb. It has that hate because it does not believe black people can govern.’ 

Setumo Stone, Hlengiwe Nhlabathi, S’thembile Cele, Andisiwe Makinana and Paddy Harper report

ANC

After a lacklustre start to an election campaign run by Water Affairs and Sanitation Minister Nomvula Mokonyane, the ANC brought in its tried-and-tested head of campaigns, Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula, to turn things around.

Mbalula’s team took over the planning of the party’s campaign programme, and President Jacob Zuma and other senior leaders moved on their instructions.

The spectre of sparse crowds faded into memory as leaders addressed large community meetings in open areas, and the party held rallies in filled stadiums, which were carefully selected for their symbolic value.

Members of Mbalula’s team said they adopted a similar campaign to the ones the ANC arranged for former presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki.

For example, they moved from holding meetings in closed halls and stadiums – as these were for “preaching to the converted” – to open areas.

This worked perfectly for Zuma, who mingles easily with crowds, and also extended appeal beyond formal venues.

ANC number crunchers say high voter turnout in the key wards that they have identified in highly contested areas, such as Nelson Mandela Bay, will secure majority votes for the party.

Mbalula has also been deployed to mend relations with unions in the Eastern Cape. Metalworkers’ union Numsa, which is strong and influential in the automative sector there, took a decision not to support the ANC last year.

And teachers’ union Sadtu has sided with Numsa in its fight against the Cosatu leadership. Numsa was expelled from Cosatu – and, by extension, the tripartite alliance – in November.

“There may be animosities, but our strategic objectives are the same,” said a regional Sadtu leader.

Another challenge facing the ANC in the area is the fact that it is run by a temporary structure after the regional body was disbanded over factional divisions.

The ANC’s bigwigs will crisscross the country this week. It plans to end its campaign with a spectacular Siyanqoba victory rally in Johannesburg.

DA

DA head Mmusi Maimane has described the party’s change in strategy as a move from “air war campaigning” to “ground war campaigning”.

This has entailed a greater focus on door-to-door canvassing, particularly in black areas, where the party hopes to draw the support that will dislodge the ANC.

“I have forced the organisation to be a lot more activist-oriented in particular communities,” a visibly exhausted Maimane told City Press this week.

He has spent little time in DA-governed Western Cape municipalities – which, he says, are as good as “sealed”. Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille was left to campaign alone in the city, where the ANC had deployed President Jacob Zuma and other party bigwigs.

This week, the DA will plough its energies into the three battleground metros of Tshwane, Johannesburg and Nelson Mandela Bay, and round up its campaign with a grand rally in Johannesburg on Saturday.

Maimane has spent a lot of time in Tlokwe, in the North West, as the DA hopes to displace the governing party with the help of independents who defected from the ANC.

In Midvaal, the only DA-controlled municipality in Gauteng, the party has assigned senior MP Makashule Gana to run the campaign and ensure the administration does not fall to the ANC.

In KwaZulu-Natal, a big focus has been on the Indian vote, which the DA has incrementally snatched from the ANC since the inaugural 1994 elections – and which is up for grabs following the disarray that has characterised the Minority Front since the late Amichand Rajbansi’s passing.

In other provinces, the DA has realistic goals of using the campaign to strengthen support and activate structures in preparation for upcoming by-elections and the 2019 general election. “In any battle, you fish where you know you will do well and then you grow in other areas,” said Maimane.

He equated the financial gulf between the DA’s election budget and that of the ANC with a David versus Goliath scenario. “We have been able to match them quite substantively. We have gone out of our way to say we will take them out.”

EFF

Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema told City Press that if his party failed to at least triple the 6% share of the vote obtained in the 2014 general elections, its ambitions of unseating the ANC in 2019 were as good as dead.

Malema, who addressed more than 25 meetings during a blitz of Limpopo this week, said the EFF had been first off the poll starting blocks and had adopted a rigorous person-to-person contact campaign. He said that, over and above winning municipalities, the party’s aim was to increase the number of EFF voters.

“If we get less than what we got in 2014, we must forget about 2019. We will not be a player in 2019. But if we triple those numbers and increase significantly, then come 2019, we are the biggest players in the political space ... That is the only scientific thing that will build people’s confidence in the EFF,” Malema said.

The party has directed its focus on Limpopo, where it believes it can win several municipalities, including the provincial capital Polokwane. Malema spent several days there last week – and after a weekend campaigning in Gauteng and the Free State, he will head north again for two more days of consolidating support.

EFF heavyweights have also spent much of their time in KwaZulu-Natal, where the party wants to take advantage of crippling divisions in the ANC’s ranks and win small municipalities.

The EFF’s chairperson, Dali Mpofu, has been ratcheting up support in the Eastern Cape, where the party performed badly in 2014.

The party also wants to clinch the role of kingmaker in all metros except Cape Town, where it is a straightforward standoff between the DA and the ANC.

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