Cape Town - A new political party in Cape Town has emerged to try and take advantage as more disgruntled residents decide to shift away with big political parties in local government elections scheduled for November 1.
A group of communities workers joined hands and formed the Democratic People’s Movement (DPM), which will contest 36 wards mainly around northern and southern suburbs.
“We started DPM in May after we got tired of false promises,” the party’s ward 44 candidate Deborah Davis said.
“The movement is determined to wipe out unemployment and poverty by means of entrenching a culture of entrepreneurship to create sustainable jobs and not three months EPWP (Expanded Public Works Programme) contracts.”
Davis said the party recognised that the small business sector was a powerful tool to uproot unemployment and poverty.
“Equally critical is the geographic location of these thriving small businesses because it answers the question of where economic growth is taking place and which segment of society is benefiting,” she added.
A look at the candidates’ list released by the Electoral Commission of South Africa recently shows evidence of increasing numbers of new political parties that have sprouted from community members with grievances coming together.
The party believes that decent and sustainable jobs will give people access to a decent quality of life regardless of their race, gender or creed. Davis said the DPM had opted not to contest all the wards in Cape Town.
“We did not want to just have candidates for the sake of having them or just because someone is famous in the community. We wanted people with a track record of working for their communities and want to give them a voice. People who really want to get the system right,” she said.
A third of the party’s candidates are men and the rest women. Most of the candidates and party members have been running soup kitchens in their communities.
Davis said if she was to rate outgoing Cape Town mayor Dan Plato, she would give him five out of ten: “He failed to deal with a lot of issues like poverty and service delivery. He is the reason we can no longer stand back and watch while the quality of life in this city is deteriorating. Every voter must wake up on 01 November and choose a better life for themselves by voting out the DA.”
Davis said a DPM-led local government would establish a “think tank of experts” to devise strategies for the municipality to engineer its budget to reduce the cost of water and electricity.
“A DPM local government will also ensure that it devises innovative ideas to raise funds on a continued basis in an effort to ease the burden on the residents of Cape Town, especially the poor, the senior citizens, the unemployed and the middle class,” she added.
Political analyst Asanda Ngoasheng there was an increase of political parties because people felt that the existing ones did not cater for them.
“South Africa is a diverse country with diverse needs and interests. The governing ANC has failed many people and the opposition parties that exist have not built confidence in themselves as ready and capable of leadership. In spite of the DA's leadership in the Western Cape, they have shown they only work for white people. Big parties will be dented because the votes will be split among many smaller parties,” Ngoasheng said.
Weekend Argus