DA continues losing wards to ANC in by-elections

The Democratic Alliance (DA) lost two more wards to the ANC in Wednesday’s by-elections as the backlash against the opposition party continues in polls that saw the ANC make serious inroads into DA traditional backyards.

But a newcomer party, Land Party, was the star of the moment when it grabbed the ANC’s ward seat in Overstrand Municipality in shock results that saw Land Party candidate Michael Mhana become its new ward 12 councillor.

Mhana got 56.15% in a 37.99% voter turnout on Wednesday, an indication the Western Cape rural municipalities could turn into electoral battlegrounds in the 2021 local government elections.

Besides this loss, the ANC overall had a field day when it retained 12 and gained five new wards at the expense of the DA and Mpumalanga-based Better Residents Association (BRA).

The DA expected some losses in Oudtshoorn Municipality in the Western Cape, where it lost wards 5 and 10 to the ANC. However, the party retained six wards overall in the 24 by-elections held across 17 municipalities on Wednesday.

The DA witnessed Oudtshoorn slip slowly from its grip. While the party’s Fielies September retained ward 4, ANC candidates, Naomi Jonkers and Berry Booi took wards 5 and 10 from the DA.

The question was whether this was the beginning of the DA loosening its grip of the Western Cape, particularly the Garden Route region. In the previous by-elections, it lost a ward in George and Saldhana in the Western Cape and in Lenasia in Gauteng.

The DA’s setback continued from the recent 11 November elections, where it experienced a net loss of seven wards.

But its top brass, including federal leader John Steenhuisen, federal council chair Helen Zille and national spokesperson Refiloe Nt’sekhe, defended the party’s poor showing. They attributed it to the party’s democratically mature voters “who punish us where we have disappointed them” through weak local councillors or perceived governance failures.

Recently, Steenhuisen told The Citizen that they lost a ward in Lenasia, Gauteng, because a DA councillor unnecessarily backed an EFF-sponsored illegal land invasion and angry residents punished the DA at the polls for that.

In George and Saldanha, the party blamed governance matters and its decision to fire the George mayor. Zille said this was a backlash from the coloured voters in the area.

She said in cases where the DA had directly competed with the ANC and the EFF, the party fared better. It performed well in the traditional DA areas, but took punishment in the coloured and Indian areas for specific reasons.

The ANC did very well again this time, as in the by-elections of 11 November. It retained 12 wards, lost one and won five new ones – the two in Oudtshoorn and three it grabbed from BRA in wards 8, 18 and 32 at the Bushbuckridge Municipality in Mpumalanga.

The ANC retained all its 2016 seats in the Eastern Cape, North West, Northern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Gauteng and Free State. The DA also kept its two seats in wards 27 and 28 in Ekurhuleni metro while the ANC retained ward 42.

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