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The Freedom Front Plus (FF+) has ascribed its election success to “minority groups such as the Afrikaners” being blamed for everything that’s going wrong in the country.
In an extensive interview with City Press’ sister publication Rapport, party leader Pieter Groenewald said that its growth had more than doubled after the elections this week because minority groups, such as Afrikaners, are tired of taking the blame.
“We say: ‘Do you know what? We’ve always wanted to build this country.’ But now the ANC government comes and blames me for everything that’s gone wrong. ‘It was the whites who stole the land; it was when Jan van Riebeeck landed here …’ Everything that the Afrikaner has built up is now being regarded with suspicion,” he said.
“And now people – yes, DA voters – are coming to the fore and saying: ‘Me and my forefathers helped build this country, why should I take the hiding?’ And then they went and put their crosses next to the FF+.”
According to the final election results, the party received more than 414 000 votes this year, up from about 165 000 in 2014, raising its support by 2.38%.
The party will send 10 MPs to Parliament and 11 of its members to various provincial legislatures, up from four MPs and three members of provincial legislatures in the last term.
Answering a question about DA members who say “good riddance” in response to allegations that they have seemingly lost voters to the FF+, Groenewald said: “Aren’t you ashamed? Isn’t it an insult to your once loyal voters; those who you took for granted? You thought your traditional voters were a given. You underestimated [them].
“To now try and be clever and say we are part of a right-wing trend worldwide, the so-called Trump syndrome? You’re using that as an excuse for your poor election campaign. It’s a convenient way of trying to cover up your own inability to keep your voters.”
Read: The rise of the FF+ surprised even it. Its trump card? Expropriation
Groenewald also said two specific cases involving Mmusi Maimane, the leader of the DA, had apparently sparked outrage among the party’s new voters.
He referred to the Ashwin Willemse controversy and the outrage that was sparked by photographs that were circulated by a DA youth leader of a classroom in which white and black children were understood to have been separated by race in Schweizer-Reneke in North West.
“And don’t make a mistake, it was the DA’s reaction to [teacher] Elana Barkhuizen in Schweizer-Reneke that made people see red. The worst is that it was this DA youth leader [who shared the photo], but also Mmusi, who supported him and didn’t repudiate him.
“And Mmusi himself is also guilty because, with the Ashwin Willemse incident on SuperSport, Maimane immediately played the race card, while the FF+ in both cases asked that the facts first be ascertained.”
He said that the FF+ rejected racism, but that these events had a significant impact.
Groenewald denied that the FF+ was a radical right-wing party, or that the party’s growth was a result of the radical left, the EFF, becoming more prominent.
“I dismiss that assumption with contempt,” he said.
He added that the party had merely managed to read the mood among minority groups correctly.
“People were almost too afraid to be Afrikaners. Max du Preez and Ruda Landman at one stage said they resign from the Afrikaner nation. Resign from whom, I don’t know, because you are what you are,” he said.
“People are beginning to realise that you are allowed to be white, a minority group, an Afrikaner without being labelled a racist. The ANC has effectively succeeded in demonising the Afrikaner.”
Fikile Mbalula, the ANC’s election head, said the following about the FF+’s performance: “It’s about the land question.”
