Sue Segar
The DA’s new leader in the Free State, Patricia Kopane, said yesterday her main mission would be to reach the party’s new target of 30.9 percent of votes in the province in the 2014 elections.
She said in an interview that the DA also wanted to win a major Free State municipality in the 2016 local government elections, and was eyeing Mangaung in particular, while aiming to win the province in the 2019 elections.
A former nurse who grew up in Bloemfontein, Kopane was elected at the DA’s provincial conference in the Free State capital at the weekend. She takes over from Roy Jankielsohn.
Dr Annelie Lotriet, DA higher education and training spokeswoman, was elected provincial chairwoman.
Kopane said preparing for the 2014 elections would be the biggest challenge ever faced by the party in the Free State.
“The party got 12 percent of the votes in the province in 2009 and, in 2011, we increased our vote to 20 percent. Getting 30.9 percent of the vote in 2014 amounts to about 250 000 votes in the Free State. We face huge challenges – and our targets require 100 percent commitment,” said Kopane, who is also an MP and the DA’s spokeswoman on health.
Describing herself as a Free State woman, Kopane said: “My interest is in the Free State people – their success and their failure. I want to be there to make a change as that is where I was born.
“The first thing she would do as provincial leader would be to ensure each DA constituency understood the party’s strategic plan and how to carry it out.
Kopane said it was important for the DA to win a key municipality like Manguang in 2016 “because we can only start making changes when we are governing and can put our policies in place, like in the Western Cape”.
“Our message is always about service delivery, making sure we render the service to the people,” she said. “People need to see that it is only through voting for the DA that we can change the province.”
She said the state of local government in the Free State was poor.
“Things are on the verge of collapsing… A few weeks back, Marquard, in the eastern Free State, was like a war zone, with people protesting about the absence of water and electricity.
“Unemployment is particularly high here, with most of the youth having no jobs. Poverty is rife – and in some areas, you can smell the poverty in the air. It is pathetic to realise that, after 18 years, some people still have to go and fetch wood from the hills.”
She said one way of encouraging voters to support the party was to highlight the fact that the DA was the only party to do regular performance assessments of its public representatives.
“This ensures that they are doing their job.” Kopane said as provincial leader, she would set about driving the DA’s message into “every single constituency and community in the Free State”.
“I will also ensure that all our public representatives create a permanent presence in all Free State communities. People must not see us as a party only at election time. They must know we are a party that is always there and they must believe in us and trust us.”
Kopane entered politics about 10 years ago, joining the DA in 2003 after studying the policies of all the political parties in SA.
Her decision drew flak from members of the ruling party, but she stuck with it and has risen through the ranks. In 2004, she was appointed to head the party’s lead programme aimed at grooming future opposition leaders in the Free State. Two years later, she was promoted to DA councillor in the Mangaung Local Municipality.
She held this position until she became an MP in 2009. She was previously the party’s spokeswoman on social development and has also served as a DA whip in Parliament.
The mother of three is married to Mojalefa Kopane, a high school teacher in Bloemfontein.
She is registered for a Master’s in political leadership, governance and transformation at the University of the Free State, but has put her studies on hold because of work commitments.
Kopane said she believed an increasing number of people were putting their faith in the DA in the Free State and felt it had a strong future in the province.
“Race is no longer an issue. People want a better life and a quality life, especially the young people not working who don’t have baggage about history – what they want is a job, a decent life in a rainbow nation.”