Politics.za: DA 'March For Democracy' Hits Wrong Notes

DA 'March For Democracy' Hits Wrong Notes

Farrel — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 08:57:00 -0500

I’ll be honest with you, I thought the DA led ‘March for Democracy’ was not a very effective idea. The DA knows that any protest action will have no effect (the ANC doesn’t respond when it’s own voters when they protest and they’ve been protesting a lot lately) so the march was little more than a well attended press conference.

The post-march sniping from the DA about the ANC organising competing taxi protests made it even worse. Firstly taxi protests are not new in Cape Town, especially illegal ones a they’ve happened with regularity over the past few years and I have no doubt they will increase in frequency as government clamps down on unsafe taxi and begins (hopefully) the rollout of the taxi recapitalisation program. There’s also the fact that that besides Cape Town there were protests in other cities , and the protests have continued to happen.

Because of the aforementioned recapitalisation program the taxi industry and the ANC led government are not exactly best friends at the moment. In fact I wouldn’t be suprised that had the ANC actually asked the taxi industry to strike during the march, the taxi bosses would have turned around and done their best to transport even more DA supporters to the march. There’s also the fact that Mayor Zille has had discussions with Minister for Local Government Sydney Mufamadi earlier this morning which left her “warmly encouraged”, a marked change from the rhetoric heard at the march.

The accusations of ANC/taxi industry collusion from the DA in my opinion just make the DA look like they’re playing the victim card, an image I feel they should be getting away from. And please for love of all that is good will the DA please keep Tony Leon away from a microphone till he has learned some Xhosa/Zulu/Sotho.

"DA 'March For Democracy' Hits Wrong Notes" by DA Mal

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 01:36:23 -0600

The march: The primary aim of the march was not to instil fear in the heart of the ANC, but resolve in the hearts of its opponents. Politically, we can treat Dyantyi’s behaviour not as a contest between the ANC and the multi-party government so much as a marketing campaign waged on behalf of the city government by the ANC. We don’t plan to let the advantage slip away…

The taxi strike: I mostly agree with you, Farrel; the strike had nothing to do with the March for Democracy, it was coincidence. But there were rioters who piggy-backed an anti-MPG message on the taxi strike.

Subcouncils: These are now truly locally-based structures, the aim being to localise decision-making as far as possible in the hands of people who might be assumed to be best equipped to do it.

The previous city administration’s subcouncil structure resembled gerrymandering. All subcouncils in the city were ANC-controlled, and this was accomplished by moving DA councillors from the areas they were elected to subcouncils where their effect could be contained (specifically, Gugulethu, in the case of the Atlantis councillor I’m thinking of), and vice versa by moving ANC councillors into areas that elected DA representatives.

The revised subcouncils include several that are run by the ANC, for the self-evidently democratic reason that their remit covers areas that elected ANC councillors.

The previous administration also emasculated subcouncils by reducing them to rubber-stamps. The MPG is changing the rules. For example, in future, land use planning will be examined and approved by subcouncils, in an effort to harness local knowledge of conditions; and this ought also to reduce the backlog of planning applications stuck in the centralised administration. This decentralisation may not work everywhere, but it should work well enough in a good many places, rather than failing equally badly everywhere as it does at the moment.

"DA 'March For Democracy' Hits Wrong Notes" by Farrel

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 06:22:19 -0600

I wrote a bit about it here. According to Zille the majority of the structure of the subcouncils are basically the same as what the previous ANC administration had except they are grouping areas with the same needs together. How accurate that statement is I can’t say.

"DA 'March For Democracy' Hits Wrong Notes" by someamongus

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 03:53:42 -0600

Farrel as our man on the scene do you know anything of the ANC charges that the DA has been racally gerrymeandering subcouncils? Haven’t seen much abt it in the press but the ANC and ID have mentioned it a couple of times.