The official opposition party has deployed its big guns to wrestle Diepsloot’s Ward 95 from the ruling party. A team, headed by the party’s Fourways constituency MP, Cameron Mackenzie, is working flat out to perfect a winning formula.
Mackenzie told Fourways Review during an exclusive interview that the ANC was in trouble in Diepsloot. “… We are like termites hiding between the bricks and roof, eating the house away,” he said.
“The house will just collapse but the occupants might not even see many of us in action. They might see just one or two and by then the house would be gone,” said the comical and eloquent Mackenzie.
The party’s mayoral candidate, Herman Mashaba, was back in Diepsloot on 10 March, barely a week after conducting a door-to-door campaign in the populous township. Mashaba, the Black Like Me multi-millionaire, appealed to residents to rescue themselves from squalor by voting the ANC out. “We can deliver basic services to this township if you vote for us – but if we fail to do so within five years, please do not vote for us again,” Mashaba told residents.
Mackenzie declined to reveal his party’s strategy but excitedly announced that they would be fielding a star candidate with a high community profile. “Our Ward 95 candidate is highly community oriented whose identity will be made public very soon,” he hinted.
In the last national elections in 2014, the ANC won about 8 500 votes, the Economic Freedom Fighters 2 500 with the DA trailing a further 500 behind in the two Diepsloot wards, 95 and 113. These figures, however, do not seem to scare Mackenzie who maintained that his party would have met every resident of Ward 95 face-to-face by the time of polling. “We will snatch the victory from behind without being noticed,” vowed Mackenzie.
He added that angry voters, who the ANC were allegedly taking for granted by not delivering basic services, would punish the ruling party in the coming local government elections.
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