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eThekwini ANC mayoral candidate Zandile Gumede believes the governing party can increase its current majority in Durban despite the birth of the EFF and the rise of independent candidates who are ANC members standing against their party.
Gumede, who is also the ANC’s eThekwini chairperson, made the comments after casting her vote at Amaoti, Inanda, north of Durban, where she is registered as a resident of ward 53 where she was born and grew up and still has a family home.
The ward is the site of a five-way battle between the ANC, the EFF, the IFP, Cope and an independent candidate who is an ANC member and claims the backing of most of the branch membership ahead of the ANC leadership’s choice of nominee.
It is one of 57 in the city where independent candidates who were either sitting councillors or ANC branch first choices are standing against the governing party.
Gumede was previously ANC councillor for the ward – she is now number 1 on the party’s proportional representation list – for two terms and has backed the party’s current nominee, Bongani “Zero” Xqansi.
Xqansi, who formerly lived in nearby ward 53, was chosen as the ANC ward candidate despite the local branch preferring Philani Ntuli. Ntuli is now contesting the ward as a “community candidate” and has the backing of local residents, many of whom turned out to vote wearing red Cosatu or SACP T-shirts.
The EFF has fielded Cindy Shozi, the IFP Mandla Nene and Cope Thabo Mavuna.
“I have been honoured by the way people at Amaoti have come out. You can see the vibe. I am very grateful. I want to assure you that the ANC will continue to rule eThekwini. We have worked very hard and tomorrow eThekwini is going to be 101% ANC,” she said.
“We are taking this ward and we are taking eThekwini,” Gumede said. “As mayor I will make sure that the development that we have started here will continue and we will change the lives of people here.”
There were several hundred people waiting to cast their votes at the station when Gumede and her entourage arrived for her to vote.
Elsewhere in the Inanda-Ntuzuma-KwaMashu area in north Durban, where several of the independent candidates come from, voting stations were packed with residents waiting to cast their votes. There was a limited EFF presence at most, with the IFP even less visible, and almost no DA presence in the form of T-shirted activists, posters or party agents.
While voting in KwaZulu-Natal has kicked off relatively peacefully, the ANC claimed that one of its supporters was hacked with a panga outside a polling station at Phongolo in the Zululand district this morning.
ANC provincial secretary Super Zuma said the man was hacked while standing in the queue to vote. The identity of the man who attacked him is known, but he ran away.
He said while the party wouldn’t speculate about the reason of the attack, it was “dismayed” that a “gruesome” attack had been allowed to mar the election process.
