TheTroublemakerTimes

With respect to the title : The DA lost the Western Cape last elections…but not properly !

 Jacob Zuma has been courting the Afrikaners, big time. You may have noticed this over the past few months, and wondered about it. Today however, in an almost shocking speech, our next president, not only endorsed Orania, but went even further, to call White Afrikaners, the only “true” white South Africans.

He lauded them; he told them they were African, because, unlike many English whites, they carry only one passport.

They cheered, somewhat incredulous, no doubt.

Its nonsense of course, the passport thing, but the rest has a real resonance, and its fabulously reconciliatory, but most of all, it is nothing short of  brilliant politics.

The stuff of which real politics is made.

And its about the Western Cape too.

Where unlike Natal, many people speak Afrikaans as a first language.

And, I predict, it’s going to cost Helen Zille, at least one of her jobs.

The one she loves most. Mayor of Cape Town.

How?

The answer is a lesson in voting numbers, the ugly idea of coalition governments, and serious research.

I say serious research, because, my friends who know about the DA, often speak of how highly researched their party is. Which boggles my mind, because Helen Zille has got to be the most alienating force in so called neo liberal politics today, next to Hugo Chavez.

But there is some research going on at the ANC too, it seems, and its that research that, I think, because on this, I’m not in the know, has prompted this almost unbelievable new alliance of unlikely bedfellows.

To elaborate, dear reader, we need to consider the election results ,of last elections, in the Western Cape.

Now, considering the constant strutting and bellowing from the DA in the Cape, Helen at the fore, you might be forgiven for believing that the DA has a strong and significant support base there. They certainly seem to think so.

Memories are so short.

Ms Zille’s dreams of  power hang by a very tenuous thread in fact. The kind of tenuous thread that keeps forcing changes in Israel.

The coalition government.

The DA, last elections, won 12 seats in the Western Cape, out of 42 or roughly 28 % in comparison to the ANC, who won 19 seats, or roughly 46%. How the DA intend to maintains control, is by offering the smaller parties a coalition government. The biggest winner among those in 2004 was none other than the NNP who won 5 seats or around 11 percent.

It was that marriage, born out of opposition to the ANC, deeply entrenched in Afrikaner psyche, which saw an amalgamation giving the DA a major boost to 17 seats. Along with coalition plans with the ID and smaller parties, they have managed to keep that 46 percent outright win by the ANC at bay.

The DA iron fist rule will depend on an unhappy alliance, with only one common belief, opposition to the ANC.

Now the tide is changing.

Those 5 seats, held by once Afrikaner NNP votes, are up for grabs.

And Cope, is failing to make inroads to the ANC, but remains attractive to black voters who oppose the ANC, but cannot handle Ms Zille’s new politics of idiocy.

If the ANC can win those 5 seats, it will have a clear majority, and Herr Zille and her unholy alliance will have to run and hide.

Let me put it this way, even if it’s a bit blunt.

Turns out, Afrikaners are good at integration, especially working class ones. They care about one thing, preserving their identity. Ms Zile’s little fiasco is so English middle class that it begs belief. Even historically, there have always been great Afrikaans struggle heroes, who were ANC.

It goes further, Afrikaner dislike for the English has deep historical roots, with one war and some concentration camps to boot.

Afrikaner fear, the Swart Gevaar that was imposed by the NP, is gone.

Not to mention the historical inequalities between wealthy, white English voters, and the traditionally working class Afrikaners.

When those votes were cast, they were not for the DA, which Afrikaners know is the new PFP, and they used to call that Pack for Perth.

The ANC is politically and socially more attractive than Zille’s elite white cabal, with trick photography to include blacks.

Just ask Martinus, that’s who all those Afrikaners voted for last time, they were really his 5 seats. And where is he now, in the ANC, proving what?

There is a place for Afrikaners in the ANC.

Now Zuma is actively courting them.

Watch out Helen.

Its only 5 seats.

I think you will loose them.

Daar is kak in die mielies.

Time will soon tell.