[Alchemy]

FIRST, a disclaimer: we’re talking about a by-election in two municipal wards and not the outcome of a national general election.
But having said that, there can be no doubting that the DA has pulled off one of the biggest political coups of recent times by taking two wards away from the ANC in Gugulethu.
They didn’t accomplish this with an opportunistic, last-minute, blitz strategy or because of apathy. This victory was the result of months, even years of work in this community by the DA which has rightly recognised that it needs to break out of traditional racial stereotyping if it is to ever make inroads into the ANC’s base.
Perhaps more telling was the fact that the victory came after the ANC’s youth league showed just what a liability it was to the party when its members were pictured on television destroying recently constructed toilet shelters because they weren’t – in their opinion and it is now clear, not that of the community – of a sufficiently high standard.
The youth league called for Cape Town to be trashed. That’s how infantile ANC politics in the Western Cape has become. If there’s one thing you can be sure of its the fact that the residents of the Western Cape are proud of the mother city. Zille’s rise to the Western Cape premiership was due in no small measure to her application of the principle that “all politics is local”. She sorted Cape Town and the voters of the province wanted more.
The Western Cape ANC is fast losing any prospect of ever winning the province back from the DA. And how long will it be before the DA takes a ward in Soweto?

PP, how do you explain this??

http://blogs.timeslive.co.za/hartley/20 ... n-history/

[politburo player]

A big victory to be sure, at least there seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel. If the DA can enact successful reform within their own home province (Western Cape), maybe this success can be exported elsewhere throughout SA. Once improved service delivery becomes more visible in Western Cape, it will be easier to attract voters from neighboring provinces. But then again, never underestimate the predictability of stupidity; the squatter camp vote will probably always buy the cheap ploys the ANC creates for them.

I have always viewed Western Cape as the province of last resort; a place to rebuild South Africa from the ashes of a future famine or tribal war. It has consistently proven to be the most stable region in South Africa. The overpopulated tribal provinces of KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, and Limpopo, all ANC strongholds, will almost surely be the birthplace of any future catastrophe.