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Johannesburg – Democratic Alliance supporters in Eldorado Park said on Friday that they believed the party could bring change to their area.
The African National Congress was not paying enough attention to coloureds, said three people in DA T-shirts who attended the party’s campaign event near the Chiawelo Clinic in Soweto.
"They are treating our coloureds as if we are hanging by the fence," Nicole Botha, 23, who is unemployed, told News24.
She intended to vote for the DA because they wanted a future for their children to grow up in, and not to have to endure a struggle like the older generation during apartheid.
She said President Jacob Zuma’s claim that the DA was an apartheid party was a "false accusation" and that he was just scared that the DA would win.
Stacia, 32, and unemployed, said she trusted the DA would create jobs, which were necessary to end substance abuse in the area.
Ashwin Alexander claimed the ANC had helped build a drug rehabilitation centre which offered job training and opportunities.
"That means if we want to get jobs we have to become drug addicts and go to the centre before we can work," a disgruntled Alexander said.
Not interested
Not everybody in the neighbourhood was positive about the elections.
Two young men, who sat in front of a house observing the gathering, said they would not be voting in Wednesday’s local government elections.
Jerry Mputhi, 20, felt the system was failing him.
"I am not interested in politics because I applied for a bursary to study law, and didn’t get anything," he said.
His friend, Nkululeko Masingane, 21, said he did not like the DA’s message because it was all about what President Jacob Zuma was doing wrong.
"Don’t tell me about Jacob Zuma and his mistakes. We want to know what they [the DA] must do. They must not tell us about someone else’s mistake," he said.
'Zuma can’t count'
DA leader Mmusi Maimane, party federal chairperson Athol Trollip and Johannesburg mayoral candidate Herman Mashaba spoke at the event.
Booming loudspeakers on the back of a trailer carried their message through the neighbourhood.
While Mashaba focused on what the DA would do in the city, Trollip told the crowd that the economy could not work because Zuma could not count. By extension, he could not know how the economy was doing or how many jobs were being lost.
Maimane said Soweto had given birth to many freedom fighters, including the youth of 1976 and former president Nelson Mandela. It was still giving birth to freedom fighters, he said, while gesturing to the DA supporters gathered in front of him.
Maimane was born in Soweto. He would address the party’s final rally in Dobsonville on Saturday.
- Find everything you need to know about the 2016 Local Government Elections at our News24 Elections site, including the latest news and detailed, interactive maps for how South Africa has voted over the past 3 elections, or download the app for iOS and Android.
