id warns against volkstaat, gay ban in poll salvo

By Donwald Pressly (I-Net Bridge)

May 16, 2006: The first salvo of a key municipal by-election battle began on Monday with Patricia de Lille's Independent Democrats (ID) warning that to vote for the Democratic Alliance (DA) would mean that voters would be backing an Afrikaner volkstaat, the banning of homosexuality and the sale of alcohol over the weekend.
 
In the June 7 municipal by-election the ID will be hoping to recapture a seat which it won in the March 1 municipal poll - one of four ward seats it won in the 210 seat council in which it won 19 others on a proportional representation basis. The DA, however, will be aiming to increase its wafer thin ruling coalition majority on the council - by winning back a seat it gained in 2000.

The DA had won the Tafelsig ward - a sprawling working class area of the coloured Cape Town electoral heartland of Mitchell's Plain - in 2000 but its sitting councillor defected to De Lille's party. But after winning the seat for the ID two months ago, he resigned and is now the DA candidate. Sheval Arendse opposed De Lille's support for the continuation of the African National Congress administration in Cape Town.

On Monday ID Cape Town council caucus leader Simon Grindrod introduced its candidate June Frans, a community worker, to the media in the ID caucus room in the opposition wing, the Marks Building, at Parliament and said Arendse had never objected to the strategy of the party while being part of its caucus.

Taking aim at Arendse, he said: "If one thought that it was of such high importance at the time... one would have thought that he would have expressed it."

Grindrod said he was confident that the voters of Tafelsig would see through the DA "and its tactics" in the by-election - which could give the DA-led multiparty alliance which took power in March a one-seat majority. "You will see food parcels spring up here. The DA has patronage to offer," he acknowledge, but he was confident voters would eat the food and vote ID.

Referring to the United Democratic Movement (UDM)'s weekend decision to confirm its participation in the DA-led coalition... "I find it extraordinary that a party like the UDM can explain with a straight face why they have put a DA government in power. In this by-election campaign we are going to explain to people that you are not voting for the DA but for a DA coalition which includes the Freedom Front (Plus) which wants a volkstaat ... which includes the ACDP (African Christian Democratic Party) which wants to outlaw homosexuality and ban alcohol sales at the weekend.

"You are not voting DA in this by-election. You are voting for a coalition government that includes some of the most extreme parties that this country has. We are saying to the people in Tafelsig if you want a volkstaat, vote for the  DA coalition. If you believe that homosexuals should be locked up, vote for the DA coalition. That monstrous coalition ... like Frankenstein, they put together these bit and pieces... which they are battling to control. They made their bed, let them lie in it," said Grindrod, a former hotel manager. "We will continue in opposition"

"You find me one person in Tafelsig who will vote for a volkstaat. That's what it is ... that coalition."

Nomination day for the election is May 23, but it is expected that apart from the DA and the ID, the United Party and an independent candidate will be standing. The African National Congress is not expected to contest the ward - as it gained a minority of votes in the March 1 election in the area - behind the ID and DA.