Johannesburg - The battle for control of the Nelson Mandela Bay metro intensified on Friday as the ANC sought to contain the fallout over the Constitutional Court judgment on Nkandla, while appealing for loyalty from its grassroots supporters.
The party deployed its bigwigs, including President Jacob Zuma and Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, to communities while deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte paraded several DA defectors and a former councillor Knight Mali who joined the ANC. The defectors were pesented in front of the city hall, where the DA was denied permission to picket by the ANC-run Nelson Mandela Bay municipality. It also ordered a DA billboard to be removed on Friday.
The DA had applied to the council to hold a picket outside the city hall against the ANC’s support of Zuma over the Nkandla matter.
While Nkandla and the many controversies, among them the apparent influence of the controversial Gupta family on Zuma, remain divisive and hotly contested inside the ANC, party leaders downplayed its impact on the electorate on the ground. However, they have spent the week addressing ANC branches in the Eastern Cape on the decision by the ANC national leadership to accept Zuma’s apology over Nkandla.
Ramaphosa and Duarte said on Friday the issues of Nkandla and the Constitutional Court judgment had not been raised on the ground during their mobilisation campaigns, but that people were raising local “bread-and-butter” issues.
“The Constitutional Court issue on Nkandla has not come up. Ordinary people are focusing on how we can improve their lives, so I tell you with great honesty that has not come up,” said Ramaphosa.
Zuma on Friday told a crowd of supporters at Wells Estate in Port Elizabeth that they should support the ANC even when it hurts them. He said the ANC was a home not only to its members but all South Africans, saying it was unbecoming for one to leave their home when there were domestic problems.
“It is like when at home you have a mother or father who beats you - that does not mean that you simply leave your home. You stay at home and try to strengthen the home. There are many parties formed by people who make noise. When the noise is over, there is nothing else,” said Zuma.
But DA mayoral candidate and federal chairman Atholl Trollip said defector Mali was a “stranger to the truth”.
“If he’s honest; he will tell you that he only ever had opportunities in the DA, to such an extent that he was exposed to the Young Leaders Programme, he was given every opportunity. But Mr Mali became more and more distant from the DA and even his performance was very questionable,” Trollip said.
Political Bureau
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