Cape Town - Former ANC councillor Sammy Claassen has announced that he would be contesting the 2019 national elections under his own party.
He said it was time for a new alternative for South Africans.
“We need to mobilise together. The ANC has become full of looting and corruption. Our leaders have become used to luxury and they have failed our country,” Claassen said.
On Sunday, Claassen revealed the name of the new political movement He promised that the Alliance of Indigenous & True South Africans (Aitsa) would improve the lives of all South Africans.
“We have merged with the People’s Republic of South Africa (Prosa) and the New Nation Movement and our main focus for now will be in the Western Cape, Gauteng and Northern Cape. We are calling for all other parties to come to us,” he said.
Claassen left the ANC after being suspended last year for bringing the party into disrepute. He allegedly accused the party’s acting chairperson, Khaya Magaxa, of using a derogatory and racist word to refer to coloured people during the ANC conference of the West Coast on August 25 and 26.
He resigned from the party in October and started throwing hints of his intention to start his own party. Claassen lashed out at the ANC and DA.
“We refuse to merge with the ANC and DA. The DA liberal policies are something we are totally against.
“Why is it that every time when people of colour go to the beach in December then there is always a problem? I made an appeal to all the coloured people to leave the ANC because the ANC don’t support the coloured community,” he said.
ANC Western Cape elections head Ebrahim Rasool said: “The ANC has tried to be too much of a broad shoulder to accommodate fringes and tendencies and ill discipline. I think the ANC is at its finest when it has rules, and I think people like Sammy Claassen don’t belong in the ANC.
“If he has found a home, that’s good, as long as it’s not with the ANC.”