Maimane: We are Mandela’s party, the polls are wrong and without us SA will fall

Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Mmusi Maimane addressed the media as well as his own campaign staff on Tuesday morning at the party’s headquarters in Bruma.

The leader of the official opposition acknowledged it had been a “tough year” for the party.

But, he said, while recent polls indicated the party’s support was dwindling, it was, in fact, growing.

A recent poll by the Institute for Race Relations indicated that the party’s support has dropped by 5% since September, while in October, Afrobarometer data based on South Africans’ perceptions on the upcoming 2019 elections showed an even worse outlook for the party, putting their support at a tie with the EFF’s at 11%.

Maimane, however, believed the party was “much bigger than it was in 2014”.

The DA leader also repeated his assertion that only his party acted in accordance with the vision of late former president Nelson Mandela, adding the party planned to continue doing so.

He told those in attendance that South Africa “will fall” if the DA failed in their mission.

Maimane said his party had done the right thing in its handling of the matter concerning former Cape Town mayor Patricia De Lille, saying “corruption cannot be swept under the carpet”.

De Lille has since announced the launch of a new political party to contest the 2019 elections, which she has called Good.

Maimane also reaffirmed his party’s opposition to expropriation without compensation.

The DA leader confirmed earlier this week that his party would be going ahead with its legal challenge to the Constitutional Review Committee’s report calling for Section 25 of the Constitution to be altered to allow for land to be expropriated.

The report was recently adopted by parliament. Two-hundred-and-nine MPs voted in favour of it and 91 opposed it after a robust debate took place.

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