Battleground Western Cape: Door to door, street to street the foot soldiers compete for votes

The Western Cape is one of South Africa’s highly contested provinces during this election cycle. It is the only province not ruled by the governing party but the DA's 59% majority is being challenged by the ANC, GOOD and the EFF who are all trying to get a bigger bite of the pie.

In the 2014 national and provincial elections, there were 2.1-million votes cast in the province and with issues such as the water crisis, poor service delivery in some areas, inequality between rich and poor residents, as well as farm evictions, and the ongoing issues between the Democratic Alliance and Patricia de Lille, GOOD leader, the race for votes in the province has proved interesting.

Read in Daily Maverick: Let’s have a dignified election day, says Western Cape IEC officer Courtney Sampson

“Votes in the Western Cape are very important to the EFF,” said Melikhaya Xego, provincial chairperson. The Economic Freedom Fighters have been campaigning in “every ward”, voting district and municipality, Xego told Daily Maverick.

In the 2014 elections, the party received only 2.11% (44,762 out of 2.1-million valid votes) and the party is looking to improve on that, through active “fighters” visible on the ground.

In April, the EFF canvassed for votes across the province, both in the Cape Metro and also in the more rural areas such as Beaufort West, Hermanus, Cederberg and Stellenbosch.

Xego told Daily Maverick that the EFF is focused on land in the province as people in rural areas are still living in “high squalor”.

“When we touch the issue of land, we are touching on white monopoly capital,” said Xego, in reference to the owners of farms in the Western Cape, who are predominantly white men.

“Our people are still ill-treated,” added Xego.

Over the next few days, EFF activities on the ground will be ramped up. “We will continue speaking to our people, going door-to-door,” Xego said. “There will be a lot of blitzing, where we do massive attacks on malls, bus stations, train stations and taxi ranks so that our people will hear the EFF message.”

While the EFF only managed 2% of the votes, the African National Congress (ANC) garnered 32.89% of Western Cape vote.

Over the course of April, the ANC campaigned in various areas across the Cape Metro and into the farmlands of the province, such as Stellenbosch, Darling, Saldanha Bay and Calitzdorp.

ANC head of elections Ebrahim Rasool told Daily Maverick that traditionally, the biggest natural base in the province for the party was in “our African township”. Rasool added, that there was a  good performance by the party in the previous election in the province’s “rural coloured area”.

Now particularly, these farm areas are faced with evictions and a lack of the implementation of the national minimum wage, said Rasool, who described the conditions for the ANC to make progress in such areas as “particularly fertile ground” to take votes away from the Democratic Alliance (DA) back to the ANC.

“For the next few days we will not deviate from the formula that has enhanced the ANC’s campaign. That is 15,000 volunteers daily going door-to-door, canvassing people, persuading people, winning trust and winning votes,” Rasool said.

According to Rasool, this weekend will see ANC members and leaders in wards across the Western Cape conducting “decentralised excitement campaigns,” encouraging voters to celebrate what the ANC has done in the past.

The governing party, the DA with its 59.38% majority, is also trying to be on the ground, according to provincial party leader Bonginkosi Madikizela.

The focus of their campaign, Madikizela told Daily Maverick, “was to grow in each and every area”.

Historically, Madikizela said the party had struggled to grow in “black areas” but the party had started to appeal to black areas, through various ways including the recent welcoming of “800 members from Mfuleni”.

Madikizela, when asked about the DA’s claim that a vote for a small party is a wasted vote, the provincial leader said “people must realise the repercussion of smaller parties”.

Street signs in the Western Cape, and in particular the Cape metro, were originally plastered with the faces of DA presidential candidate Mmusi Maimane and Western Cape provincial candidate Alan Winde. Now, Cape Town residents, in particular, will only find blue posters proclaiming, in multiple languages, that a vote for the DA will “Stop the ANC & EFF”.

The party has emphasised on multiple occasions that voters should be afraid of an ANC or EFF-led Western Cape. And they will do so again on Workers’ Day, 1 May, at Hillsong Church in Century City. According to Madikizela, the party will focus on emphasising the danger of having an ANC and EFF coalition.

“When a voter walks into a voting booth, they must think about all the commissions. Those commissions are clearly indicating how the ANC has destroyed our economy, how the ANC has pushed 10-million people into the queue of unemployment. And they must just juxtapose that with the DA government in the Western Cape,” said Madikizela.

When speaking with potential voters on the ground, Madikizela said party volunteers focus on emphasising the good work the DA has done in the Western Cape, as well as the creation of jobs and crime prevention.

So what is the potential outcome of the upcoming poll?

“My perspective is that the DA is not guaranteed an outright majority in the province in the upcoming elections. In a dramatically changed national political context, they might achieve it but it is not guaranteed,” said Professor Cherrel Africa, from the Department of Political Studies at the University of the Western Cape.

Africa would not speculate on the outcome of the provincial vote but told Daily Maverick “recent surveys and by-election results reveal that DA could face declining support due to a number of contributory factors including the management of the drought in the Western Cape and the ongoing conflict with Patricia de Lille”.

In January 2019, Wayne Sussman wrote in Daily Maverick that the DA had lost ground in Ward 31 on the Cape Flats, and remained steady in other, rural parts of the province.

But Africa told Daily Maverick that analysis of electoral trends and political developments “reveals that parties are primarily responsible for their own gains and losses. In a context of low party identification, national political developments and party behaviour are crucial influences on voter perceptions and behaviour in the Western Cape”.

Patricia de Lille’s party, GOOD, has been campaigning in areas in Cape Town such as the CBD, including a trip into Cape Town’s party street, Long Street, and other places such as Elsies River, Manenberg and Bellville.

Brett Herron, secretary of the newly established party, told Daily Maverick that GOOD had been “analysing where people are undecided” through polling on the ground as well from party supporters. The party is offering an alternative to undecided voters as the “DA appears to be losing supporters,” he said.

And how important is the Patricia de Lille factor to GOOD’s campaign trail?

While De Lille is recognised nationally, “our challenge is to make sure people know GOOD – her new home,” said Herron.

Herron said the party would continue to promote the message that South Africa needs something new in the last few days before the poll. GOOD will not be holding any rallies or massive meetings. Instead, like many other political parties, their members will knock on doors and hand out pamphlets emphasising that older parties have failed them.

“When we speak to people on the ground, are starting point is that the country we all dreamt of in 1994 and the country we have today are not anywhere close, so the old parties that have been in government have failed South Africans,” Herron told Daily Maverick. DM