Cape Town - The ANC has been quietly plotting to topple the DA in the province and, for the first time since his appointment as the party’s elections campaign head, Ebrahim Rasool has revealed his plan.
The stars aligned when the DA appointed MEC for Economic Opportunities, Alan Winde, as the next premier this week, Rasool said.
He was speaking for the first time in an office which the ANC has dubbed its “war room”.
Rasool said: “The announcement of Winde is bad news for the people of the Western Cape, but very good news for the ANC. If we could have prayed for a candidate, it would have been Alan Winde.
“It’s bad news for the people because he presided over the effective implosion of the Western Cape economy over the last decade,” Rasool said.
“We left him with a growth rate of 5.8%. He’s brought it down to 1.3%. We left him with an unemployment rate of 18.9%. He took it to its height of 23%. Most distressingly, Winde took the crime statistics from a reported low of 330 000 to almost 400 000.”
Rasool added that social housing delivery had also decreased in the province on the DA’s watch.
“He has shown that he has no backbone when he allowed his party to drum up the Day Zero panic that kept tourists away.”
Rasool said the DA “had to assassinate” outgoing Mayor Patricia de Lille politically in order to announce Dan Plato and that the party had persuaded Mmusi Maimane not to stand for premier, allowing Winde to be selected.
He described the DA as being in “panic and free fall”.
“The crisis they’re facing is not only organisational, it’s related to governance. We have seen more land invasions and protests than ever before.”
Rasool said the ANC, already on the ground as 2019 marches nearer, would put Winde’s record before the people when its volunteers present the party’s case to the people of the Western Cape.
He said the DA was a “one-trick” party, which relied on former president Jacob Zuma.
Inside the war room were former community safety MEC Leonard Ramatlakane, Nokuthula Nqaba and members of the provincial legislature, Richard Dyantyi and Cameron Dugmore.
Among other focus points for the ANC campaign are safety and security, cleanliness in communities, the transport system and a manifesto.
Dyantyi said the volunteers should be more visible going forward as they prepare a manifesto, to be completed in January.
Asked when the ANC would go to a conference and announce its premier candidate, Dyantyi said it was not ANC tradition to announce candidates for the position, although this tradition had been ignored in the 2016 elections.