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Patriotic Alliance’s stunning victory breaks ANC and DA’s 15-year ward-seat dominance in Cape Town

Patriotic Alliance’s stunning victory breaks ANC and DA’s 15-year ward-seat dominance in Cape Town
Wayne Sussman
By Wayne Sussman
9 Feb 2023
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Having put together a solid set of results, Gayton McKenzie’s Patriotic Alliance now controls the narrative of being the most credible alternative to the DA in the Western Cape in 2024.

The Patriotic Alliance (PA) took advantage of a bad administrative error by the DA to win a traditional ward off the latter in Cape Town by beating the more established parties like GOOD and Al Jama-ah. 

The DA was forced to watch from the sidelines since it did not appear on the ballot, as the PA broke the DA and ANC’s 15-year duopoly of ward-seat control in Cape Town.

In another by-election, the ANC had an easy win in Dikgatlong in the Northern Cape. 

Ward 56 (Kensington Maitland) in Cape Town: PA 41% (1% PR) GOOD+Inglis 24% (25%) ACDP 13% (2%) ARA 11% (1%) Al Jama-ah 5%(7%) EFF 5% (1%) PAC 1% (<1%).


The setting: Ward 56 is east of the city centre. It is sandwiched between the N1 Highway, Voortrekker Road and Jakes Gerwel Drive. Most voters are in Kensington and Windermere. The ward also contains Maitland and Factreton. Its well-known landmarks are the Acacia Park parliamentary village and the SAS Wingfield naval base. 

The 2021 local government election: The DA lost a lot of ground here in 2021 as its ward percentage went from 83% to 49% while an independent candidate, community activist and baseball administrator Kevin Inglis, won 17% of the vote. The DA also lost votes to GOOD which won 8% of the vote to finish third on the ballot. Al Jama-ah more than doubled its support in Ward 56 to also lure away some DA voters to get 7% support. The Cape Coloured Congress (CCC) also hurt the DA with its 6% total. The DA only won more than 50% of the vote in two of the eight voting districts in the ward. These were both in the Windermere part of Kensington. Inglis won 25% of the ward vote at Kensington High School. Al Jama-ah enjoyed its best support in Maitland, winning 10% or more in two of the voting districts there.

The by-election: The resignation of the ward councillor triggered the by-election. Big drama followed as the DA failed to submit a candidate in a ward where it would have gone into as the favourite. The second-largest party in the city, the ANC, also failed to register a candidate for the by-election. The CCC too decided to sit out the by-election. This meant that three parties, which accounted for just 60% of the ward vote total in 2021, would not be choices for voters this time round.

Read in Daily Maverick: “KZN romp – IFP, DA beat the heat, and their rivals, in Mtubatuba and Msunduzi”

GOOD won the big endorsement of Inglis, and he stood as the party’s candidate. Patricia de Lille was the last leader of a political party not from the DA or the ANC to win a ward in the City of Cape Town. This was when the Independent Democrats won a by-election in 2008. De Lille, now leader of GOOD, went into this by-election as the leader of the party most likely to break the DA and ANC’s 15-year duopolistic hold on ward seats in Cape Town. Al Jama-ah went into this by-election as the second-most-popular party on the ballot when one considers the 2021 result. Gayton McKenzie’s Patriotic Alliance had ambitions to replicate its gains in the West Coast and Central Karoo in the vote-rich Mother City. The EFF fielded a young and energetic candidate and ran a very visible campaign. The African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) was the most natural of coalition partners for the DA on the ballot and it was hoping that DA voters would lend the party their vote this time round.

The PA received 58 votes in the entire ward on the proportional ballot in 2021. In the by-election it received less than 58 votes in only two of the eight voting stations as the party received 1263 more votes than it did in November 2021. It is a stunning victory for the PA. It fielded a young candidate who is under 30. Cheslyn Steenberg wanted to run as an independent candidate in 2021, but those plans were shelved. Steenberg has strong ties to the community, especially Factreton. He is well known for his leadership of the Kensington Community Policing Forum. It was the voting districts around Factreton where he not only put daylight between the PA and the chasing pack, but also gave the DA big pause for thought. Sunderland Primary School was where the DA did best in 2021, winning 62% of the vote. In the by-election, it was where the PA did best, winning 56% of the vote. It was also where turnout was highest in the by-election, at 35%, which is fractionally higher than 2021. The African Restoration Alliance (ARA), an ACDP breakaway party, came second here with 18%. The area with the second-highest voter turnout was Windermere High School, a few hundred metres from Sunderland Primary School. The PA won 56% of the vote here as well, getting the same percentage the DA did in 2021. Turnout at Windermere High School fell to 26% from 47% in 2021, but it was the second-highest in the by-election. The 390 vote margin at Sunderland Primary and the 202 vote margin at Windermere High was significant and GOOD could not close the gap and fell short.

GOOD won one of the Maitland voting districts and tied with the PA in the relatively vote-rich St John’s Church district in Maitland. However, turnout was well down in Maitland, ranging from 11% to 18% compared with 42% and 49% in 2021. The ACDP ran the PA and GOOD close at St John’s Church with its 25% total, well up from 2% in 2021. Al Jama-ah was not able to match its 2021 showing in Maitland, which explains why the party went backwards in this by-election.

GOOD also won the Kensington High School voting district. This was where Inglis did best in 2021. The party received 35% of the vote here in the by-election, only 1% up from the combined total of 34% Inglis and GOOD received in 2021. The PA garnered 31% in this district and the ACDP 18%. The 21% voter turnout was aligned with the general turnout percentage for the ward, well down from 57% in 2021. GOOD needed to get more voters out in this part of Kensington. DA and CCC voters who turned out here did not vote for GOOD, but rather for the PA and the ACDP. 

The PA won two other voting districts where it was very closely fought between it and GOOD. The PA finished first in these districts with 32% and 30% respectively. The EFF won the small Acacia Park Primary School district, which was carried by the ANC in 2021. 

The new Cape Town seat allocation: DA 134 (135) ANC 43 EFF 10 GOOD 9 CCC 7 ACDP 6 PA 5 (4) FF+ 4 Al Jama-ah 3 Cape Independence 2 ARA 2 AIC 1 DIP 1 CMC 1 UDM 1 UIM 1 PAC 1. Total: 231.

Poll: 21% (47%). This is a fair turnout for a metro by-election. 



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The PA now has good momentum. It currently controls the narrative of being the most credible alternative to the DA in the Western Cape in 2024. It has won a ward and broken the DA and ANC’s stranglehold in wards in Cape Town, achieving this with a relatively wide win over GOOD. It had a solid second-place finish in Lamberts Bay in the West Coast in 2022. The party has put together a good set of results. McKenzie, the Central Karoo mayor, emerges as the most likely challenger to the DA in the Western Cape in 2024. While the PA will celebrate in Kensington, there are key by-elections coming up where it will hope to cement this position, but at the same time other parties will want to assert themselves as the most credible challenger to the DA. 

Read in Daily Maverick how the PA's Kenny Kunene landed the post of Transport MMC in the richest metro in South Africa:

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-02-08-joburg-should-be-grateful-they-have-me-kenny-kunene/

Ward 6 (Delportshoop) in Dikgatlong, Frances Baard, Northern Cape: ANC 67% (46% PR) PA 20% (18% PR) DA 13% (12% PR). 


The setting: Delportshoop, a small town in the Northern Cape, is the site of the confluence of the mighty Vaal and Harts rivers. The R370 regional road, which connects Schmidtsdrift with Jan Kempdorp, runs through the town. The R31 regional road which connects Danielskuil with the seat of Dikgatlong-Barkly West, also runs through the town. The town’s economy is linked to the lime quarries at nearby Ulco, and agriculture. Dikgatlong forms part of the Frances Baard district which encompasses the provincial capital Kimberley and extends to the North West border towns of Warrenton and Hartswater.

Read in Daily Maverick: “EFF retains key Polokwane ward, makes inroads in another Limpopo ward as ANC notches landslide E Cape win” 

The 2021 local government elections: The ANC won an outright majority in Dikgatlong, taking eight of the 15 seats. It did however lose ground to the PA and the EFF. The ANC comfortably won Ward 6 but finished with less than 50% of the vote on the proportional representation (PR) ballot. What happened in other parts of Dikgatlong also happened in Ward 6: the PA took votes from the ANC and the DA to finish runner-up. The DA also lost votes to the Freedom Front Plus (FF+) which won 8% of the vote. The DA still beat the EFF for third place as the red berets garnered 9%. 

The by-election: The young ward councillor for Ward 6 died in a car accident. Only the ANC, the DA and the PA threw their hats into the ring. A factor to watch was whether the EFF, the FF+ and local party Dikgatlong Independent Forum (DIF) voters would give their votes to other parties. It was especially rare to not see the EFF on a by-election ballot.

The ANC romped home in the by-election, its emphatic victory serving as a reminder to those who think the party is at risk of losing the province and the country in 2024. It swept all eight voting districts. Its best result was at the third-most-populous voting district, the Koopmansfontein Research Station, where the party won 93% of the vote, up from 79% in 2021. In 2021, the DA and the PA ran the ANC close in the two respective Delportshoop town voting districts. This is where the great proportion of Ward 6 voters are. The ANC won these two districts comfortably in the by-election – going from 33% to 54% at Delportshoop High School – while the DA went from 20% to 28%. At the Diamantberg Pentecostal Church, the ANC went from 46% to 69%, while the PA slid from 35% to 29%. 

DIF voters who showed up for the by-election went back to the ANC. The PA struggled to get DIF and EFF voters to turn out for it, while the DA also battled to get FF+ voters out for its candidate. This by-election win means the ANC retains its outright majority in Dikgatlong. 

Poll: 47% (54%).

Next by-elections


The next round of by-elections is on 15 February. There is a lot at stake as the future control of three municipalities – Newcastle, Cederberg and Cape Agulhas – will be determined. There is also a competitive by-election in Mtubatuba where the IFP will have a chance of creating more stability for itself in a municipality where it is currently dependent on three smaller parties. DM  

The proportional representation (PR) ballot result from the previous election is used when it is a better indicator of support for a party in the ward.

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