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This is what smaller political parties are doing in a final bid to gain votes ahead of the August 3 local government elections:
United Democratic Movement (UDM)
While UDM leader Bantu Holomisa refused to say which municipalities the party was targeting, he told City Press that Nelson Mandela Bay would be the focus next weekend.
The UDM will host its Siyanqoba rally in Mthatha in the King Sabata Dalindyebo Local Municipality next Sunday.
Holomisa has previously said that the UDM stood a “good chance” of winning the struggling municipality.
In fact, the party won control of the municipality in 2000, but lost it to the ANC the following year due after a floor-crossing episode.
The UDM surprised many when it humiliated the ANC in a by-election in August last year by winning 49% of the vote in a ward that was previously an ANC stronghold.
The ward covers parts of Veeplaas and KwaMagxaki in Port Elizabeth, and the ANC received 42% of the vote, while the DA got 9%.
Holomisa said they were not targeting any specific municipalities, but were campaigning hard everywhere.
“It could be good if we could be rewarded,” he said.
The party expects more representation in North West municipalities, following its growth in that province in the 2014 national elections.
“We have built the UDM in the North West, especially in the mining areas like Marikana. We did well in that province in 2014 and we are piggybacking on that success,” said Holomisa.
Overall, he predicts the UDM will improve compared with the previous election in 2011.
Holomisa revealed that the party had spent “not more than R3 million” on the campaign.
He again decried the “abuse of state resources” by the DA and the ANC, claiming that the two parties used state resources to fund their campaigns, and this was why they were opposed to party-funding legislation.
“Elections in South Africa are about resources. If you don’t have resources, you struggle,” he said.
Congress of the People (Cope)
Cope is relying on undecided and disillusioned voters to turn around its fortunes in this election.
The target is mainly Gauteng, were Cope president Mosiuoa Lekota and deputy president Willie Madisha will intensify the party’s campaign this week after fielding 2 090 councillor candidates in various provinces.
Spokesperson Dennis Bloem said a lot of work had been done in other provinces and the party hoped to come out as kingmakers.
Lekota and Madisha would also do some work in the Free State and Limpopo on election day after intense campaigning in Gauteng.
Like other parties, Lekota was in the Eastern Cape, where he held a rally in Bhisho and conducted a door-to-door campaign in Butterworth in a bid to woo voters disillusioned by the ANC.
The party was realistic enough not to waste any of its resources in KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga.
After limping into the 2014 elections due to infighting that has consumed its leaders since its formation, the strategy for this election was centred on consolidating and building structures.
This visibility, the party hoped, would be enough to take it back to its former glory even with its limited resources, which are no match to that of the ANC or the DA.
Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP)
As political parties intensify their campaigning ahead of the election, IFP president Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi took his party’s campaign to the south coast of KwaZulu-Natal before heading to Limpopo to try to tap into traditionally ANC-dominated rural areas.
His message since the start of the party’s campaign has been centred around convincing the electorate to trust the IFP to do better than other parties.
The IFP lost ground in 2011 thanks to the breakaway National Freedom Party led by Zanele Magwaza-Msibi.
Today, Buthelezi is back for a rally in Nongoma, in the Zululand district, where the party said it would welcome new members.
