New political party formed in Giyani area

A NEW political party called the Independent Body of Communities (IBC) was recently formed in the Giyani area with the aim of contesting against the ANC in the 2016 local government elections.

According to IBC president, Pat Mabandla, the party, which is already registered with the Independent Electoral Committee, aims to rescue the Giyani municipality from a series of problems which the ANC government has failed to rectify in its 20 years of governance. “We used to have mines and farming schemes in this municipality where our people used to work, but all of that has disappeared into thin air in the face of the ANC’s government,” he said.

“And somebody must do something about the decaying buildings such as our parliament, which the ANC government is failing to maintain,” he continued, saying his party wanted to take over the municipality in the 2016 local government elections. “We don’t care about the national votes, all we need is a two-third majority from Giyani voters to enable us to take over the municipality and run it in a way that would create jobs for the people of Giyani,” he said.

Asked if they had any different strategy to help them govern better than the ANC, Mabandla said their strategy was to govern together with the traditional leaders so that the land crisis, which is currently a problem in Giyani, would disappear and open ways for land development.

“We plan to govern with traditional leaders and involve them on every decision that we make right from the start so that they become part of the outcome and not feel left out when it’s time for implementation,” he said.

According to him, they initially wanted to join Ximoko xari Xaka, the party of the former chief minister of Gazankulu, Hudson Ntsan’wisi, who died in 1993, but decided against it because the party was apparently divided.