Durban - The DA is pinning its hopes on its “diversified” councillor candidates list for this year’s local government election in the hopes that it eats away at the ANC’s majority and grabs extra seats in municipalities across KwaZulu-Natal.
Presenting the party’s KZN councillor candidates list on Wednesday, DA provincial leader Zwakele Mncwango said quotas were not used to compile their candidates list, and that they had chosen the best to represent the party during the election on August 3.
“We believe that we have the most diversified candidates. All our candidates went through a rigorous selection process and were chosen based on merit,” he said.
He said race was not a factors when they chose candidates for wards.
Of the 1 159 application the DA received to be candidates for the local government election, 709 were chosen. Of those, 497 are black African, 89 are Indian, 107 are white and 16 are Coloured, Mncwango said.
The DA’s eThekwini candidate list is topped by Haniff Hoosen, the party’s mayoral candidate for Durban – who is also an MP in Parliament.
Mncwango said a decision had not been made on Hoosen’s future, should he not become mayor of eThekwini.
“He would need to make a decision. There is nothing that says he must resign from Parliament. The party will decide (if he stays in Parliament or becomes an eThekwini councillor)”.
In eThekwini, experienced councillors Duncan du Bois, Andre Mitchell and Peter Davies will not be back for another term as they are retiring.
Some DA-held wards have new candidates based on assessment of the councillors’ performance.
“We followed a process that was transparent. Not everyone will make it back. It is based on performance. We score councillors on what they do politically and what we have assessed them on in the past five years. Our selection process is not random, and it’s not done on the sake of who likes who,” Mncwango said.
Of the 709 candidates for councillors, nearly a dozen names were being kept confidential as they were either government employees or representative of other political parties, Mncwango said
Two of the confidential candidates were in eThekwini, one of whom is standing as a ward candidate while the other as a PR ward candidate.
One of these candidates being kept a secret is the mayoral candidate for President Jacob Zuma’s hometown of Nkandla, whom Mcwango said was “a big name”.
Asked jokingly by reporters if it was a Zuma, Mncwango said: “Maybe it’s Jacob Zuma‚ who knows? It’s possible”.
But moments later he backtracked, saying that Zuma would never make it as a candidate for a DA councillor position because of the rigorous selection process.
“We have screening processes. He won’t qualify based on that,” Mncwango said.
* The DA’s youngest member to make it onto the list is uMlazi-born 22-year-old journalism graduate, Nomfundo Khuboni.