Cape Town - If the future plans of political parties are anything to go by, the Western Cape is in for yet another bumper year of protests, with the ANC vowing to put the spotlight on service delivery and the EFF threatening land occupations.
With the 2016 local government elections still another year away, political parties are already polishing their battle armour.
And in most cases they are also tweaking their strategies and addressing mistakes made during the 2014 general elections.
The ANC will start the New Year with a bang as it celebrates its 103rd birthday on January 8 with a major event at the Cape Town Stadium in Green Point.
ANC big wigs will jet into Cape Town with supporters for the event.
ANC Western Cape leader Marius Fransman said the province was important to the ruling party as it represented the cradle that gave birth to the struggle against colonialism and apartheid.
“It is therefore significant as we celebrate 103 years since the founding of the ANC on January 81912. This occasion provides us a vista to assess how far we have come and what critical tasks require focus in the year ahead.”
He said the local celebrations also showed that the Western Cape was part of South Africa and that the ANC would not allow it to become a “no-go” area.
But Fransman said the ANC’s vision of building a democratic society that was united, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous, remained its biggest challenge in the Western Cape.
He warned that the New Year will see the ANC even more active in highlighting the plight of the poor.
He said the consequences of watching the Western Cape perpetuate the old patterns of privilege, racial and emotional abuse coupled with a provincial and city government failing to realise that redress, transformation and empowerment had to be vigorously pursued, were too grave to contemplate.
Meanwhile, DA leader and Western Cape Premier, Helen Zille said the 2014 general elections would go down in her book as the party’s biggest challenge although it ended up being the party’s biggest success story with the DA growing 30 percent nationally.
Outlining the way forward for the DA, Zille quoted Colin Eglin saying: “The DA is all about the ‘long haul’ in politics.”
“We ‘keep on keeping on’ as Helen Suzman used to say.
“In 2015 we will keep on keeping on the long haul of making our country a successful democracy,” Zille added.
The DA leader said her proposal to Agang to merge with the DA would go down as her party’s biggest political boo-boo during the past year.
“It started in good faith, but ended in disaster,” she said.
She said the biggest lesson learnt this year is that “it is tempting, given South Africa’s history, to make decisions on the basis of race, but that approach usually harms, rather than helps”.
For the EFF 2014 was a good year, having achieved its goal of getting representation in Parliament.
EFF MPL and member of the party’s national command team, Nazier Paulsen, said while they had yet to get answers from President Jacob Zuma, one of their biggest successes has been their attempts to hold the president accountable for the expenses at Nkandla.
Paulsen said it had been challenging being the only EFF member in the Western Cape legislature.
Promising fireworks next year, the EFF MPL said they planned to implement the party’s seven non-negotiable cardinal pillars, starting with the expropriation of land without compensation for equal distribution in use.
“The Western Cape is a special case. Here we have 287 informal settlements. These are on the outskirts of the city. We will ensure that we occupy land closer to the CBD.
“I have always liked Rondebosch Common and I believe it would be perfect to establish the province's first fully integrated community,” he added.
Paulsen said they would invite all landless people across the racial divide to come and claim a piece of land.
“Then there is the District Six precinct, currently dispossessed families have to buy back land. They cannot afford it. We will ensure that we assist them in occupying land there,” he added.
And with regard to the president’s State of the Nation Address (Sona), Paulsen said the EFF was pleased that the opposition parties had followed its lead, having shown their teeth.
“Sona must not proceed until Jacob Zuma gives us a date when he will pay back the money,” he said.
ACDP leader Ferlon Christians says the party’s biggest challenge was changing public perceptions that it is too small to do anything for the voters.
“We need to bring the message across that we are relevant and can only grow if the public vote for us.”
Christians said the ACDP was championing its conservative view in all spheres of government.
“All bills that infringes on the morals of society will be challenged by us,” he vowed.
Commenting on their successes for 2014, Christians said the fact that they’d retained their three members of Parliament and the party’s Western Cape seat in the legislature topped the list.
“The way forward is to make the ACDP visible and a viable alternative to the ANC and DA,” he added.
Cape Argus