PA to continue onslaught against DA

Businessman Gayton McKenzie’s Patriotic Alliance (PA), which frustrated the Democratic Alliance’s political monopoly in some coloured communities in Gauteng at the recent by-elections, is set to continue the onslaught against the DA in Cape Town.

In the May by-election, the PA gave the DA a run for its money when it wrested wards 17 and 18 in Eldorado Park, Johannesburg.

It is on a mission to control the mainly coloured areas countrywide.

The party deployed its Gqeberha-based national chair, Marlon Daniels, to lead its campaign in the DA-dominated Cape Town. It is targeting the coloured and black townships in the Cape Flats and other areas it believes are ignored by the DA.

Daniels’ campaign mandate is for the PA to reduce the DA majority in the Cape Town metro to less than 50% to force a coalition government.

It would then push for the cancellation of all municipal debt owed by residents as a prerequisite to join any coalition government. “We are determined to get the DA off its high horse here in Cape Town,” said Daniels.

“Post 1 November elections, we will be working full steam to achieve a coalition government at national level.”

His campaign took him to Khayelitsha, Langa, Gugulethu, Mitchells Plain, Bonteheuwel, Atlantis, Belhar, Witsend, Kraaifontein, Belville and Dunoon, among others.

“We are getting very good support from the people,” he said.

“They tell us they are sick and tired of being undermined, they want an alternative. They have been promised too much for too long but nothing was been delivered.

“We are going around Cape Town and people are coming out in numbers to say they are fed-up of being neglected by the DA here. The DA is claiming that Cape Town is its flagship [on service delivery] but many people are living in squalor without any services.”

At Ward 32 in Atlantis and in Cape Flats, Daniels said he witnessed poor conditions of residential flats.

“It is unfair and inhumane to charge people rental for the last half a century, when the conditions are like that. As the PA, we will make sure those people get the title deeds to become owners of those flats,” Daniels said.

The party would ensure that all senior citizens at old-age homes stay for free “so they can enjoy their meagre old age grants”.

He added: “We should cherish the elderly and restore the dignity they deserve.” Daniels accused the DA of thinking people “have short memory like gold fish. People’s intelligence is being insulted, they are told the same thing over and over again. They are now changing the votes to the PA.

“The beauty is that the PA is no longer a coloured party it was in 2013. We have evolved into a multiracial party. We are a party on track to realise Mandela’s dream of a rainbow nation.”

The party, which is contesting more than 1 000 wards countrywide, has fielded Michel Botha as its mayoral candidate for Cape Town.