ISSUE 224 - FREE
17 MAY
2019
COMMUNITY NEWS. ORIGINAL - ACCURATE - FIRST
017 631 1903 / 017 631 1845 • admin@thebulletin.co.za • 1 Kiewiet Street, Secunda (Lake Umuzi)
Mixed election results
The 2019 elections have been finalised and all the votes counted. The various political parties will now have to go back to the planning rooms to analyse all the results. But what happened to the votes in Govan Mbeki Municipality? How did the various parties fare? Who was the big winners and who was the big losers? A few major parties were very active in the runup to the election. The DA had their posters up first and had an extensive campaign with their #onesaforall slogan. The ANC was very slow to place their posters and relied on Cyril Ramaphoza’s pleas for forgiveness. The EFF plastered the town red with illegally placed posters
and made promises of land and jobs now. The largely white and smaller FF+ placed election posters with the slogan: Hit Back. Before this election it was only the DA that showed continual growth but lost 3 seats nationally. The ANC declined from 62,15% to 57,50%. This was mostly due to the growth of the EFF. The EFF grew to 10,79% of the national vote. The FF+ succeeded in winning a lot of DA votes and increased by 2,38%. The IFP clung in the mix and secured 3,38% of the national votes. The Mpumalanga results also show a number of interesting shifts in the peoples voting. The ANC will be the biggest loser with a decline in votes from 2014. During the 2014 elections
the ANC secured 78,23% of the votes but declined to 70,58% of the votes. The EFF replaced the DA as the official opposition in the provincial legislature with an increase from 6,26% to 12,79%. The DA lost some momentum and slid from 10,40% to 9,77%. The surprise of the election in Mpumalanga is the resurgence of the FF+. They increased their vote percentage from 0,82% to 2,43%. The final seat allocation for Mpumalanga is as follows: ANC 22, EFF 4, DA 3 and FF+ 1. In Govan Mbeki Municipality the ANC secured 58,38%, the DA 16,33%, EFF 14,76% and the FF+ 4,94% of the national votes. It could be a worrying factor that radical and blatantly racist party Black Land First received 373
votes. Although our views are and beliefs are protected under our constitution and society should not tolerate racism. The shift in voters is mostly from the ANC towards the EFF and the FF+ won most of their new voters from the DA. The traditional DA wards all had to relinquish some voters to the FF+ but Bethal showed the most votes won by the FF+. The rural areas and traditional ANC strongholds were hardest hit by the EFF. This election also saw the ANC grip on their voter base slowly slipping. Democracy has spoken and only time will tell how the different parties will prepare for the next municipal elections.