Cape Town – The National Freedom Party (NFP) will use the local government elections to honour its late founding president Zanele Magwaza-Msibi.
The party did not contest the last local government elections due to failing to pay its registration fee by the IEC's deadline. This was caused allegedly by internal party politics as the party was financially sound.
Parliamentary leader of the party Shaik Emam said despite their financial woes, they would do well in the elections.
“We are at a very disadvantaged position, when we did not registers for the 2016 elections after doing so well in 2011. We were sabotaged, our treasury deliberately did not pay the money to register. We lost all our income and to get back from that is not easy,” he said.
The party has not put up much posters, but Emam said smaller parties like the NFP have the solutions for local municipalities. They have selected Yusuf Mohammad as their mayoral candidate for Cape Town.
“We need to address the inequality of the past if we want to get things right.
“Your dignity and your identity comes from where you stay. Give people fully-serviced sites and create a state bank to loan people so they can build themselves decent houses on the sites,” Emam said.
He said that around R300 billion a year was lost in corruption in the country, and a lot of it was happening at local government.
“We need a credible and transparent process where when you award a tender, after you have awarded it, you advertise in your municipality who got the tender, and most importantly, how much is paid for each and every supply,” he said.
Emam said this would close the taps for corrupt officials. He also said his party would do away with cadre deployment so that the best suitable candidates can get jobs and service delivery is not affected.
Legal scholar and political commentator Nkanyiso Ngqulunga believes that despite the NFP’s challenges, it could do well as they have a track record of good governance.
“Their issues were more internal, but they do stand a chance as they gained a lot of popularity in many areas in KwaZulu-Natal. As soon as they took over after the 2011 elections, they brought changes and were committed in service delivery,” he said.
Ngqulunga said the party would not have an easy comeback after their disappearance from the ballot paper.
“They may have a substantial support, but not as it was before in 2011. The party itself was established around Zanele, and now that she has passed on, that also poses another difficult task,” he said.
Weekend Argus