Horse-trading begins in Western Cape

A woman casts her vote at a polling station in Khayelitsha, outside Cape Town, on August 3, 2016. Picture: Schalk van Zuydam

A woman casts her vote at a polling station in Khayelitsha, outside Cape Town, on August 3, 2016. Picture: Schalk van Zuydam

Published Aug 5, 2016

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Cape Town - Political jockeying for positions is set to play out at seven Western Cape municipalities where no outright winner has emerged following Wednesday’s local government elections.

As the final results for most municipalities, except the City of Cape Town, came in late on Thursday afternoon, it became clear that the municipalities of Bitou (Plettenberg Bay), Witzenberg (Ceres), Laingsburg, Prins Albert, Beaufort West, Hessequa (Riversdale), and Kannaland would remain hung if coalitions were not formed.

In Witzenberg, the Democratic Alliance led the seat count in the 23-seat council with 11 councillors elected, with the ANC trailing behind with eight seats. The DA would, however, have to form a coalition with at least two of the four other parties that won a seat each. They are the Independent Civic Organisation of South Africa (ICOSA), the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), Witzenberg Aksie or the Congress of the People (COPE).

The Active United Front, affiliated to the United Front – the workers’ party for which former Cosatu strongman Zwelinzima Vavi and National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) general secretary Irvin Jim had vociferously campaigned – looked set to be the kingmakers in the Bitou Municipality. Here, the ANC and DA are sitting on six seats each in the 13-seat council, with the remaining seat going to the UF.

A one-seat win by the Freedom Front Plus in the Hessequa Municipality could see the party wooed with a position in the council to break the deadlock between the ANC and DA, who are sitting on eight seats each.

In the smaller Laingsburg council in the Karoo, the DA and ANC are also neck-and-neck with three seats each, with the little-known Karoo Ontwikkelings Party emerging as kingmaker.

The DA is slightly ahead in the seat count in Prins Albert, also in the Karoo, with three seats to the ANC’s two seats. Who takes a controlling interest in the council here will depend on the Karoo Gemeenskap Party, which has also won two seats.

In Kannaland Municipality, which includes the towns of Ladismith and Calitzdorp, the seat allocation remained exactly the same as during the last municipal polls in 2011. ICOSA received the most support, but failed to win an outright majority with only three of the seven seats. The ANC and DA have two seats each. The municipality has been governed by an ANC/ICOSA alliance since 2011, and if the historic ties between the two parties remain intact, the council will again be ruled by this coalition.

Speaking at the IEC results centre in the Western Cape on Thursday night, ICOSA’s Bevan Jacobs said they were buoyed by the growing support the party of independents received across the province.

“You need to watch out for us. You need to keep your eyes open for us. We want to say dynamite comes in small packages. Dis ons beurt en jou ding moet pyn,” he said, lapsing into Cape Flats slang, to laughter from fellow politicians.

A deflated ANC provincial secretary Faiez Jacobs accepted defeat, given the DA had won 17 of the province’s 24 local councils and was set to win a two-thirds majority in the City of Cape Town.

“We expected we would do better, but from our side we accept these results. There is a national trend. We congratulate the winning party, but you can be assured as the ANC we will play a more effective role in opposition,” said Jacobs.

“The election was free and fair and we call on all our members and supporters to accept the outcomes of the results. We are calling on all of them for us as an organisation to rebuild, to forge greater unity and deal with the issues at hand.”

DA Western Cape leader Patricia de Lille, who will retain the mayoral chain in the Cape Town metro, described the 2016 polls as “a very historic moment in the history of our country”.

She said the elections showed that voters were embracing her party’s “philosophy of clean governance”.

“The only way we could have grown the way we did as the DA is by getting the support of blacks, whites, coloureds and Indians and so the DA has broken out of our traditional base and as much as we honour our past because we are dealing with the redress of the past, this election also presented us with a chance to design our future so we campaigned very positively on what we want the future of Cape Town to be,” said De Lille.

IEC Western Cape head Courtney Sampson said while some problems cropped up, there were no major incidents reported.

“Many of the challenges that we anticipated and risks that we foresaw never materialised and I think there is a certain kind of blessing in that,” said Sampson.

He explained that parties could lodge “section 65 objections” with the commission nationally, should they feel aggrieved.

“It has to be lodged within 48 hours of election time. It has to be material to the outcome of the election. It means if the objection is of such a nature that the result could be different, that is a section 65 objection.”

AFRICAN NEWS AGENCY

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