Cape Town - Keeping the ANC out of power in South Africa is the “primary objective” of the Freedom Front Plus, the party's chief whip Corne Mulder said on Tuesday.
“We don't think that the ANC should be made stronger in South Africa. We think we should have less ANC,” he told reporters at Parliament.
Speaking at the launch of his party's Western Cape election manifesto, he said the FF Plus would possibly enter into co-operation with other parties, but this depended on the election results.
“Our primary objective is to keep the ANC out of power, and obviously when we co-operate, we prefer to co-operate with parties with whom... we have common ground.”
“We will not just co-operate for the sake of co-operating. That we will not do. But, nobody knows what the result is going to be. So, after the election, once we see what exactly is on the table, we will take a final decision,” Mulder said.
Asked to forecast what he thought the final national results might look like, he suggested the African National Congress could end up with about 60 percent of the vote.
“The question is how [many votes] the ANC will end up with at national level. It's difficult to say, [but] everybody agrees that if the ANC should get below 60 percent, it will be a very, very strong indication of the fact that... we are entering the end game.”
Mulder warned that the ANC usually finished “quite strongly” in the final week or two before elections.
“But we think that the ANC may get below 60 percent - 59 percent, or 58 percent, even - or, maybe just slightly above 60 percent. Nobody knows.”
He was optimistic his own party would do better than in previous elections.
“If I look what's happening in our offices is that we suddenly find strong support nationally, but I would almost say some of that strongest support would be in the Western Cape.”
One of the main thrusts of the FF Plus manifesto for the Western Cape is more autonomy for the province.
Asked to spell this out, FF Plus premier candidate for the region Andre Fourie said the province needed to receive a “fair share” of what its inhabitants paid in taxes.
The province also needed the right to levy its own taxes.
The manifesto calls for the delegation of “maximum functions and powers” to Cape metro sub-councils, and the “return of status” to smaller towns in the province.
It says small towns in the province had been robbed of their identity.
On coalitions in the province, it says the FF Plus will apply itself to ensure that coalition politics in terms of the proportional representation system are enforced in order for its objectives and policies to be accommodated in the Western Cape -
keeping the ANC out.
Sapa