Scrolla.Africa delivers all you need to know ahead of the 29 May elections.
ANC – Palestinianflags are flying high in ANC election campaigns across the Western Cape, where President Cyril Ramaphosa campaigned in Cape Town and Kayamandi township in Stellenbosch. The Muslim community has swelled to over 550,000 people in South Africa and is drawn mainly from the Indian community, which numbers over 1.6-million people.
The ANC hopes this community will improve its performance in the highly contested provinces of the Western Cape, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. Former ANC presidents Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe also hit the campaign trail in Gauteng this weekend, with Mbeki starting with a door-to-door campaign in Soshanguve on Friday. Motlanthe, popularly known as Mkhuluwa in the ANC, will be in Ekurhuleni on Saturday with a public address at Tsakane Mall in the morning before attending a mini rally in Windmill Park in the afternoon.
DA – Party leader John Steenhuisen has blamed Cosatu for the growing unemployment in South Africa, saying: “While Cosatu continues to trumpet the same old statist ideology, pretending to have the interests of South Africa’s workers at heart, the dire state of our economy, and the ever-growing unemployment queue, are proof that they have failed and betrayed the workers of South Africa.”
IEC – Special votes for those who want to get home visits or vote early because they might be away on election day close on Friday 3 May. However, special vote applications for people outside their voting districts or their provinces will close on 17 May. The IEC has so far approved over one-million special votes.
Rise Mzansi – Songezo Zibi, the founder of Rise Mzansi, took his election campaign to Rustenburg in the North West, where communities told him their biggest struggles were jobs and clean drinking water. Zibi said the country needs a new breed of politicians and citizens who participate in the everyday governance of their wards and municipalities. Rise Mzansi hopes to be a kingmaker party in provinces where none of the big parties secure a clear majority in the 29 May elections.
Umkhonto Wesizwe – Jacob Zuma, the leader of the Umkhonto Wesizwe party, has chosen his path, and history will judge him according to his decisions, ANC veteran Kgalema Motlanthe said. “All of us as individuals and as leaders write our history by the choices that we make. He’s made his own choice, and that is history.” The ANC has called Zuma to appear before its disciplinary committee on 7 May.”
Pictured above: ANC’s march in the Western Cape.
Image source: X
