DURBAN - The Democratic Alliance (DA) in KwaZulu-Natal said on Wednesday its members would hand over an “eviction notice” to the ANC mayor in the uMngeni local municipality, Sizwe Sokhela.
The DA’s uMngeni mayoral candidate Christopher Pappas, national spokesperson Siviwe Gwarube and KwaZulu-Natal chairperson, Dean Macpherson will issue Sokhela with the notice on Thursday. The party said it had been campaigning relentlessly to win an outright majority and govern its first municipality in the province.
“With the recent admission by the ANC that the DA can win the municipality and the continued infighting within the local governing party, we have never been closer to being in government,” the main opposition party said.
The municipality west of Durban, in the uMgungundlovu district, includes areas such as Howick, Hilton and Mpophomeni and has a population of just over 90,000. It is the where the first democratically elected president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, was captured before spending 27 years behind bars.
Residents of uMngeni took matters into their own hands earlier this year in the face of poor service delivery, fixing a road riddled with potholes on their own.
The DA’s leader in KZN Francois Rodgers believes the party must take a few more steps to secure its position at local government level.
Heqd of tbe DA in KZN Francois Rodgers says his party is heavily contesting for the uMngeni local municipality in this upcoming local government elections.
— Jehran Daniel (@JehranD) September 29, 2021
Video: @JehranD pic.twitter.com/AYPiRSLUdR
“We have decided to put together a targeted ward strategy where we would like to reduce the ANC to the lower 50% and take some of those wards away from the ANC. One of our biggest priorities and something we are very excited about is uMngeni,” Rodgers said.
“We poised, we’ve got 9% to reach 2,500 votes to bring the ANC to the lower 50%. We’d like to govern uMngeni and we’d like to show the people of KwaZulu-Natal what a capable government under the DA is like in uMngeni.”
Political Bureau