Pretoria - A rookie political party, the Republican Conference of Tshwane, is set to contest the local election in all 107 municipal wards in the Tshwane metro.
The party is made up of independent candidates and has expressed confidence that it will eat into the support base of the dominant parties in the City of Tshwane.
To achieve their goals of securing seats in the Tshwane council, the candidates aim to capitalise on the strength of “getting its mandate directly from communities”, said one of its leaders, Tshepo Moremi.
“At the Republican Conference of Tshwane, we are a group of independent candidates.
“Every candidate is responsible for their own campaign, works with their community, requests money from their own community, reports directly to the community, and they can be removed by the community,” Moremi said.
He said the party opted for the financial model of being funded by communities because it wanted to avoid being captured by big corporations.
Regarding how he thought the party would fare in the election he said: “When you are entering a race you are not entering that race to lose.”
However, he said he had room for disappointment, saying despite any likely setback, “perhaps in the next elections we will do better”.
A former Gauteng leader of One SA Movement, Moremi said the party had identified outsourcing of workers in the city as one of problems to be addressed.
“We are saying we intend to insource our people and let them have payslips from the City, so that they have their dignity intact.”
He said the party was also “against the estimated municipal services bills”.
“Asylum offices must be taken out of our cities and be relocated to the borders so that the movement of whoever is coming into our cities can be monitored.
“Someone who is already coming to the offices in the City is already illegal in the country and that person must be arrested,” Moremi said.
According to him, the above-mentioned issues were among those that bound candidates together. However, he said, all candidates were encouraged to draft localised manifestos relevant to service delivery problems in their respective wards.
“They are encouraged to draft their manifesto for their own wards. It is the responsibility of ward councillors to draft their manifesto.”
While councillors of other parties are expected to support the views of their caucus, those belonging to the Republican Conference of Tshwane would be at liberty to differ in the interest of the community they serve.
“Before you can vote for any budget in council you can say that there is nothing for my community here and I can’t vote for this budget. Our position is clear; it is about the people. We get the mandate from them.
“You are not forced to vote with the caucus of the Republican and you are not going to be disciplined for that,” Moremi said.
Pretoria News