Cape Town is within reach - ANC

2011-05-12 14:47

Cape Town - The ANC is confident that the Cape Town metro is winnable in the upcoming local government elections, its head of elections Ngoako Ramathlodi said on Thursday.

"We are very comfortable with all the metros. We think Cape Town is within reach," he told journalists at the ANC's Luthuli House headquarters.

"We are going to storm the Bastille... We are comfortable with an overall victory across the country," he said.

This included the Nelson Mandela Bay metro in the Eastern Cape, on which the Democratic Alliance has also set its sights.

Independent candidates

The ANC's head of organising and campaigns, Fikile Mbalula, who is also minister of sport, said the opposition's hopes in that metro rode on independent candidates.

"I think all and sundry, and those who were hoping the ANC would fall in the metro, were relying on the independents," he said.

However, he said most independents had returned to the ANC fold and were campaigning for the party.

Many ANC members opted to go it alone and run independently when they were left off the party's candidate lists.

There was widespread discontent over the list process in the province, with the ANC having to defend itself from court action brought by its own members.

Mbalula said the ANC would continue campaigning till the "last hour" to ensure its victory.

He pointed out that Cape Town was not won outright by the DA in the last election, but through coalitions.

Coalitions were likely to feature again after this election, he said.

The DA's mayoral candidate for Cape Town Patricia De Lille said earlier this week that the parties were "neck and neck" in the metro.

The ANC has gone all out to win Cape Town.

It openly announced that its mayoral candidate for the city was Congress of SA Trade Unions Western Cape secretary Tony Ehrenreich.

It has not named any other of its mayoral candidates.

Double standards

Mbalula said the ANC was "looking into" media reports that Viljoenskroon mayor Mantebu Mokgosi was a director of the company hired to build toilets in the ANC-led Moqhaka municipality, in the Free State.

The DA was taken to court and rebuked for building unenclosed toilets in Makhaza, on the Cape Flats.

The ANC was accused of double standards when it emerged that it too had built open-air toilets in the Rammolutsi township of the Moqhaka municipality.

"We don't retreat... should there be any maladministration on the part of any public representatives, heads will roll," said Mbalula.

On Thursday, Mokgosi admitted to the provincial ANC that her husband’s company had sub-contracted in the Viljoenskroon unenclosed toilet matter.

ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu reiterated that the ANC had not known about the toilets and that it had immediately sent a team to investigate when it found out about them.

This, despite media reports on the toilets in July.

Mthembu said 378 toilets had been enclosed so far. The balance of about 1 600 would be closed by June.

Ramathlodi said that because the ANC only recently learnt of the toilets, the probe should include whether the ANC's monitoring of its deployees was effective.

- SAPA