Colleen Makhubele aims for at least 1% threshold

Former Joburg council speaker Colleen Makhubele made her debut as president of the newly formed political alliance, South African Rainbow Alliance (SARA), in Sandton yesterday to outline the plans of the party ahead of next year’s general election. This was the first time Makhubele spoke to the media since her axing from the Congress of the People (Cope).

Makhubele said following discussions while she was still at Cope, they knew that small parties with a threshold of less than 1% would not come back and had to form alliances to survive. Six political parties have joined SARA to ensure their survival after next year’s election.

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“Cope in 2019 was 0.2%, nothing we have done suggests we have grown to meet the 1% threshold. All of us know the dangers that are facing smaller parties given the threshold we have now, the resources that are required to run elections provincially and nationally hence we are joining forces,” said Makhubele.

She said small parties would still keep their identities and be allowed to campaign to ensure their survival. But they would not put their names on the ballot paper and would instead urge their voters to vote for SARA.

Working together

“We will use each other’s strengths to say where our strong base is. We will support you with resources to make sure you focus on that area because the danger of small parties who want to contest elections nationally is that you can’t spread yourself throughout, you cannot do it alone,” she said.

“The top parties in 2019 were the ANC, DA (Democratic Alliance), Economic Freedom Fighters, Inkatha Freedom Party and I think the fourth one was Freedom Front Plus which was just above 1%. From all of those going down, ACDP (African Christian Democratic Party) was the highest with 0.84% and the other with 0.something percent.

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“If you had combined other parties that are in parliament today, they would have been the third-largest party in South Africa and would have surpassed the EFF.

For instance, with the ACDP sitting at 0.84% in 2019, what have they done which suggests they are going above? What has Cope done to move from 0.2%% to 1% of the electoral vote? Instead, we have done a lot to take from that vote.” African Amalgamated Restorative Movement president Bishop Marothi Mashashane said SARA would form alliances like the ANC had with other parties.

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Wasted votes

Joe Mojapelo of the Independent Citizens’ Movement said they created SARA because they saw that the 2019 elections were contested by 48 parties and only 14 of those had gone to parliament. He said the rest never lived to tell their story.

It was a huge cost, among those costs were 309 000 wasted votes. “Eight seats in parliament went to waste. I feel sorry for the people of those parties because their votes were wasted. We are not abandoning our parties, our parties are still in existence and maintain their identity,” he said.

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