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NPP claims 5 Cape Town seats
06/09/2007 15:15 - (SA)
Cape Town - The newly formed National People's Party (NPP) on Thursday presented five former members of the Independent Democrats who, it said, had crossed the floor bringing their Cape Town metro seats with them.
However the ID said two of the five - Abdulla Omar and Aaron Kallie - were expelled from the party before the floor-crossing window opened.
ID chief executive Ferlon Christians said another two - Nozizwe Dase and Georgina Sass - had informed him they had not crossed.
The fifth person on the NPP list, Lungiswa Sidinana, was at an NPP media briefing at a city hotel on Thursday morning.
NPP chief executive Faried Stemmet told the briefing that the names of the five had been handed to the Independent Electoral Commission and were "signed, sealed and delivered".
"We will look after them till death do us part," he said.
He said Sass and Dase were unable to be at the briefing for personal reasons.
Stemmet also said the deputy mayor of the Winelands district municipality, Arrie Krotz, and former deputy mayor of Drakenstein, Jacqueline Noland, had also crossed from the ID.
The ID also said it had expelled Noland, but Stemmet said she had not received any notification of this.
"Suddenly the stillborn has become a baby; the baby is crawling," Stemmet said of the new party. "The baby will walk by the 15th of September."
Asked about the NPP's chances of making a difference in the metro, he said Wednesday's defection to the African National Congress of DA provincial stalwarts Kent Morkel and Kobus Brynard showed there were cracks in the DA.
"The iron lady is not so strong anymore," he said in a reference to DA leader and city mayor Helen Zille.
The NPP would let the media know the moment it achieved the ten percent threshold of floor-crossers from the DA.
"We are still negotiating, We will see who controls the metro by the 15th of September," he said.
The 15th marks the close of the two-week window.
- SAPA
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