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THE SMART NEWS SOURCE | Feb 10 2010 11:04 | LAST UPDATED Feb 10 2010 11:04 |
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Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille arrived at the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) results centre in Pretoria on Thursday morning looking bright in a sweet, pink jacket with a big, lipglossed smile. She joked and celebrated with friends and party members. Until she looked up at the IEC scoreboard. Her smile faded as she saw the latest national results. Zille told the Mail & Guardian Online that the DA is "not very happy" about the results as the party had hoped to do better. "We were hoping for 15% in this year's election, which would be a 30% increase from the last election," she said. Now the party's internal polls show it should anticipate a drop in its standings in the national election. "I think we'll come down slightly as more results from the different areas come in, but it will still be higher than the projections." Zille blamed South Africans who didn't vote: "It takes a few apathetic voters for the votes to fail." But not one to go down without a fight, Zille was confident that the party would rule in the Western Cape. "We ran a very targeted campaign and the voters are saying they understand democracy." Even African National Congress (ANC) secretary general Gwede Mantashe noticed Zille's disappointment. With a big hug he tried to cheer her up, offering a deal: "Let's rule the Western Cape together."  CONTINUES BELOW She answered with a smile: "Thanks but no thanks." DA looking good in Western Cape A confident Ryan Coetzee, elections boss for the DA, claimed on Thursday morning that the ANC is "broken" in the Western Cape. According the most recent results, the DA won 54,5% of the provincial vote with 18% of the votes having been counted. At the same time the ANC received 26,4% of the provincial vote in the Western Cape. Coetzee is confident that their turn to rule the province has come. "This election means that the ANC is never again going to win the Western Cape," he said. He feels that the DA's chances of winning an outright majority in the Western Cape are "pretty good". "In 2004, we won 27% in the Western Cape, so we've almost doubled," said Coetzee. "It's partly to do with how we've governed there and the deep dissatisfaction with the ANC." He further attributes the increased votes to a massive shift among coloured voters. "We've gone out of our way to show that here is a party that cares about all South Africans," he said. "We are not coloured-driven like the ID [Independent Democrats]." Coetzee claims they showed coloured people that the DA is aware of and understood their issues. Their growth among black voters and a "very enthusiastic" turnout of white voters have also pushed up their numbers. However, the DA doesn't regard the official figures as reliable. "The number doesn't come in as a perfect sample," said DA executive director Greg Krumbock. Instead, the party uses software designed by their inhouse software engineers to project the percentage they have won. It enables the party to make a projection of the final vote by taking into account the representative nature of each district already counted. This means that they don't need to wait for key districts in order to realistically assess their status in the polls. Krumbock feels that this system is very reliable. "In 1999 we used the system for the first time and we were only 32 000 votes out," he said. "We don't really look at that board," said Coetzee, referring to the results board looming large over the small table where he is sitting. "Projecting out from the districts we've won so far, we've got 50% of the Western Cape." TOPICS IN THIS ARTICLE
Comments
Morné Maritz on April 23, 2009, 11:52 am
The DA must not dispair by not doing well in National Elections, instead, they should hope for a hold in Western Cape only for the good governance (we have become accustomed to in Cape Town) to overlap to the rest of the province. Then, only then will they be on a good stead to sway skeptic voters such as myself to go 'blue', come 2014.
Luzuko Gongxeka on April 23, 2009, 11:52 am
Meanwhile the IEC's web site at elections.org.za keeps falling over. Why, oh why do they keep on using trashy, expensive Microsoft software, when there is better stuff available for free?
Philip Machanick on April 23, 2009, 11:59 am
That is a ridiculous comment. The IEC site is now reporting Bad Request (Invalid Hostname). This has nothing to do with a chosen platform, whether open source or otherwise. The ISP probably just cannot cope with the band-width (viva Ivy / NOT).
Having said that, the site is poorly designed, but that can happen just as easily with an Open Source platform as a Microsoft one. Go troll somewhere else.
Craig Watt on April 23, 2009, 3:14 pm
Philip, Linux is not used for the same reason people vote for the ANC, again ....
uli schmidt on April 23, 2009, 7:04 pm
DA must prove by the way they govern the western cape that we want vote at the next election.
Heidi Lourens on April 23, 2009, 11:18 pm
The election results show that at its weekest ANC is still 31.55% strong in the Western Cape, whilst the new kid COPE is 7.74%. In other words the opposition parties are going to work so hard in the next five years to regain their support. History may repeat itself, where the DA looses the province to the "COKE" and "Coke Light". We are going to watch this space!
The idea of forging links with the small opposition parties is a waste of effort, time and money. It may mean that DA spends more money on intelligence, monitoring who is speaking to whom, in order to keep them close to DA all the time. I am sure Hellen would not like to spend her valueable time doing that.
thozi gwanya on April 27, 2009, 2:09 pm
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The only worry is that if the ANC get their two thirds majority in the National polls, they can push through 17th constitutional amendment bill that grant wide-ranging powers to central government to intervene in the operations of local government, thereby wholly undermining local government’s constitutionally-mandated autonomy.
So, the ANC's attempts to sabotage the good work that the DA have been doing in Cape Town, which have up until now been fruitless, will become a lot easier.