This morning I will vote DA on both ballots, as I am convinced that the party can do a better job than any other in running the city.
I broadly support most DA positions, but in this election, it is not necessary to support most of DA policies to vote for the party. Municipal elections are not about the big ideological issues. They are about who can see to it that garbage is collected on time, roads are repaired and that electricity and water are provided without interruption.
The overwhelming majority of municipalities that are well-run are DA municipalities. The DA team leading a coalition in Johannesburg will be able to call upon those behind the DA successes in other parts of the country.
As arguably the best-organised political party, your DA ward councillor is accountable within the party. If the councillor does not respond in a reasonable amount of time to your queries, they are answerable to higher-ups within the party. That is not the case in most South African parties.
So focus on placing the best bet on the party that has the best chance of turning around Johannesburg.
There is a strong argument to be made to doubters about the DA that the party should, given the urgency created by the depth of Johannesburg’s decline, be given the benefit of the doubt.
[Image: John Endres]
No other party has the credibility or the experience of the DA to take on the job of turning Johannesburg around.
And I am also convinced that the DA mayoral candidate, Helen Zille, is the best choice to lead and manage what is likely to be a very difficult coalition. I don’t expect her to win outright, as it’s likely that she will fall short of an overall majority by around 15 percentage points. That is a reason to vote for her to ensure that she needs as few coalition partners as possible.
If she cannot find partners to form a stable coalition, she has said she might walk away from a deal. That would set back the turnaround of Johannesburg, but it would demonstrate that the DA needs a strong mandate from the voters to do its job.
[Image: John Endres]
This is a crucial election for the country. It is a chance to rescue failing cities, which are mostly led by the ANC. Five more years of failing cities can only further destroy delivery of water, electricity and services and erode business confidence. Yes, there will be another chance in five years’ time, but the crisis in our cities could be far worse, and it would take a lot more to turn them around.
Strewn with garbage
Just look at the past few days in Johannesburg. Louis Botha Avenue, one of the city’s major thoroughfares, was strewn with garbage. There has been a strike by workers at Pikitup, the Johannesburg municipality’s refuse collection agency. Last week the Municipal Workers’ Union blocked traffic along the M1 highway to defend its unrealistic R10 billion pay award by the ANC: a pre-vote present.
Many suburbs across town have been without water or had to endure very low water pressure for weeks. After I drove around Kensington last week, I had to check for damage to my car’s tyres and suspension system from the many deep potholes.
Zille thinks she can achieve a majority on the Council if 490,000 of the city’s 2.4 million registered voters vote DA on both ballots. Giving the DA a clear mandate means voting for the DA on both the ballot for ward councillor and that for proportional representative (PR) councillor.
The higher the DA vote, the less Zille will have to rely on coalition partners that have proved to be untrustworthy in the past. And the higher the vote, the more leverage the DA will have in negotiations with coalition partners.
Ideally, the DA needs to rule on its own without coalition partners, to turn the city around. That is unlikely to happen in a PR system where there are multiple political parties. But realistically, the DA could at least obtain sufficient votes to minimise the number of coalition partners it requires.
Even if you have a few doubts about the party, but think the DA is the party that can turn the city around, your best bet is to support the DA on both ballots.
Under our municipal election system, each voter is given two ballot papers. One is for ward councillors, who represent a defined geographical area. The other ballot paper is for the election of proportional representative (PR) councillors. In the case of a ward councillor, a candidate is elected to fill this post on the basis of receiving the most votes. The ward councillor ballot paper, which lists candidates in alphabetical order according to surname, is different from ward to ward. The PR ballot paper is the same throughout the city and lists the parties that have put up candidates.
A ward councillor winning the most votes is elected councillor. Proportional representative councillors are elected in proportion to the vote that their parties receive. Parties contesting a municipal election receive PR votes in proportion to the votes they receive on the PR ballot, as well as half the vote that their candidates receive in the ward elections throughout the city.
That means that, in effect, voters receive three votes. If you are giving the DA your vote, there is no point in giving the party a vote on just one ballot. Your vote for a small party on one ballot or both might be wasted and would undermine the DA. There is no point in voting for the DA on one ballot and not on the other, as you could be partially cancelling out your vote.
Slim hope
There are 83 parties, including independants, on the ballot in Johannesburg, and most of them have risen without trace to fight this election in the slim hope that they can obtain a seat on the Council. At best they can hope to be a kingmaker in a coalition government, and at worst, and most probably, they will lose their candidate deposit of R4,700.
Smaller parties cannot possibly have the resources to do the sort of research to develop the policies that the DA is able to undertake. Smaller parties like ActionSA, Build One South Africa and Rise Mzansi are largely machines for personal promotion of their leaders.
And other smaller parties, such as the Patriotic Alliance and the Freedom Front Plus, are about the promotion of ethnic identity rather than offering better policies.
Your vote is too important to be wasted on a small party. And given the disaster inflicted on cities by comrade parties, the ANC and EFF, and potentially by MK, the task must be to keep them out of municipal government.
That is why the best bet for those who are worried about the future of our cities is to vote DA this morning.
[Image: John Endres]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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