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ANC seeking to win ‘coloured votes’

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The ANC in the Western Cape will have to work towards strategies that will appeal to the coloured majority if they are to win back the province, according to political analyst, Amanda Gouws. This comes after the party held its provincial elective conference this past weekend, where Marius Fransman was re-elected unopposed for a second term as regional chairperson.

His victory has been attributed to the lack of an emergence of any strong contenders for the position, and Gouws said that despite Fransman holding a reputation as a somewhat controversial politician, he was still credited for reuniting factions within the ANC Western Cape.

“I have to say that in the last year or so we have not heard a lot of noise about factions within the ANC (Western Cape). In that regard he has been helping the party to unite the factions,” she explained.

Apart from its top position going unaltered, the party saw several changes within the executive. Whilst the Ses’khona People’s Rights Movement’s, Andile Lili failed in his bid to join the executive, Khaya Magaxa did take over as deputy against outgoing Abraham Bekeer. Other moves saw Faiz Jacobs replace Songezo Mjongile as secretary, and Maurencia Gillion beat out Hishaam Mohammed for the role of treasurer.

With local government elections set for 2016, the ANC are on an intensive to try and loosen the DA’s stranglehold on the Western Cape. The party has been on a downward spiral in terms of voter-ship since losing the province in 2009, but have been extremely vocal in their plans to recapture the region.

Gouws said the ANC were seeking to go about this by winning back the coloured majority vote, whilst also putting much focus on rural voters. In addition, she said they had also sought to make the province ungovernable for the DA, an objective characterised by the Ses’khona movements infamous ‘poo protests’.

“What they are doing now is resisting and undermining the DA, rather than coming up with their own strategies. These sorts of protests have (made) people really disgusted, and that is not going to capture the coloured vote,” she declared.

She was also critical of the fact that whilst the party were keen to win over the coloured community, the ANC both on a national and provincial level had done little to address the concerns of those voters. Instead, much of their focus was aimed at securing the black vote in the province.

“One also has to ask whether they can relate to Marius Fransman. There are people that argue he is the biggest liability for the ANC because coloured voters cannot relate to him,” she suggested, adding that as long as the DA continued to govern the province well it would be hard for the Western Cape ANC to come up with any solid strategies to depose them. VOC (Mubeen Banderker)


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