Quinton Mtyala
WHEN the registration for political parties closes at 5pm today and the local government election date is officially declared, the Western Cape will have the highest number of parties registered.
Of the 357 parties registered to take part in the August 3 poll, 61 are registered in the Western Cape, with many prospective councillors operating their political parties from their living rooms.
Many are hoping to enter councils through the proportional party lists, which opens the door to a stable income as councillors.
Cape Muslim Congress (CMC) leader Yagyah Adams, who is his party’s sole councillor in the City of Cape Town, is hoping to a make a return to council after August 3 and said he needs around 3 000 votes.
“I’ve spread my web very wide, there are pockets of Muslims all over the place,” said Adams of his strategy to field a candidate in each of the City’s 116 wards.
Apart from registering candidates in each of the wards, Adams said the party will be focusing particularly on wards where it will get support.
“I don’t have a lot of money, I’ve allocated R150 000 to this campaign. Nobody is giving the CMC any money.”
The Social Democratic Party’s Ricardo Sedres said the party also wanted to contest all the wards in the City of Cape Town, but funding troubles meant a whole lot of smaller parties would now campaign under the banner of convicted criminal Gayton McKenzie’s Patriotic Alliance.
“Gayton spoke to us, he apologised for what happened in the past and he promised to give us financial support.”
He said the Patriotic Alliance was aiming to get close to 200 000 votes. In 2014, when voters last went to the polls, the Patriotic Alliance received only 1 861 votes.
Sedres said the party would reverse its previous bad showing by recruiting community activists, “people who are already at the grass roots”.
The South African People’s Party leader, Ismail Sampson, is another politician hoping to make it into Cape Town’s city council, and says the party already had around R200 000 for its election campaign. “But we still need more money.”
The party would be fielding candidates in 50 wards in Cape Town and also focus its resources on wards in the Wellington area, which falls under the Drakenstein municipality.
Sampson’s expectations are modest – he is hoping for 4 000 votes for his seat at Cape Town’s council chambers.
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