The DA has set its sights on breaking the ANC’s grip on the Eastern Cape, declaring that its 2026 local government election campaign is part of a broader strategy to push the governing party below 50% in the province by 2029.
On Monday, the DA unveiled six mayoral candidates ahead of the November 4 local government elections.
They are Retief Odendaal (Nelson Mandela Bay), Hattingh Bornman (Kouga), Luvuyo Sizani (Makana), Bettie Lawens (Inxuba Yethemba), Eldrige Ruiters (Dr Beyers Naude) and Lorraine Smith-Johnson (Blue Crane Route).
DA provincial leader Andrew Whitfield said the local government elections had to be viewed within a broader strategic imperative: ensuring the DA reduced the ANC’s support to below 50% in provinces where the governing party remained heavily dependent on voters.
One of those provinces, he said, was the Eastern Cape.
“It’s why we have fielded the biggest number of mayoral candidates that we’ve ever fielded.
“The DA doesn’t just put up mayoral candidates in municipalities to put faces on posters.
“We do a very serious analytical and strategic exercise to identify where we can credibly win and win with a majority.”
Whitfield said the DA’s strategy in the election campaign was to focus on where it could win and where the party could grow.
“Those two strategies have very different plans in place across the province to make sure we deliver the best results sustainably between 2026 and 2029 with a view to 2031 having many more mayoral candidates sitting around these tables.
“We believe that we will retain the Kouga municipality with an increased majority.
“We believe that we can win Blue Crane Route and start to turn the tide on the decaying services in that municipality.
“We believe that we can win Dr Beyers Naude with a majority.
“We believe that we can win Nelson Mandela Bay and put Retief Odendaal back into City Hall so we can continue to get the unqualified audits, deliver better services and start to turn the engine of economic growth in the Eastern Cape around,” he said.
Odendaal said the metro had become the poster child of how quickly a municipality could collapse.
“Our problem is not necessarily financial, like so many of these other municipalities, but our problem is the fact that we haven’t got skills, and if you don’t professionalise the municipal administration, there is no way that you’re going to be able to get service delivery going in municipalities.
“So the key to our offer in Nelson Mandela Bay is the professionalisation of the municipal administration to be able to get skills back into the city.
“We’ve seen that right now in Nelson Mandela Bay, nine of the executive director positions are vacant.
“There’s no top management, including the city manager, and that has resulted in the city going into a state of paralysis, and it’s got an impact not just on service delivery, but also on our economy,” he said.
Bornman said one of the priorities for the new term was to invest in the industrial development zone in Humansdorp.
“We have as a municipality the lowest unemployment rate in the province, and we need to keep on building that.
“Our electricity prices have become so expensive, and we cannot allow our communities to live in that expensive electric environment, so we’re investing heavily into making electricity cheaper for residents.”
Asked if the DA was prepared for other parties such as the PA going after the same constituencies, particularly the coloured vote, DA provincial chair Yusuf Cassim said the PA had not actually grown.
“There have been by-elections, specific by-elections, outside of the Eastern Cape.
“They have not won any DA wards in the Eastern Cape, not a single one,” he said.
“The wards that they have won have been ANC wards. And even those, they didn’t get a majority.
“There were instances like, for example, in Dr Beyers Naude where they got a very small section of the DA’s vote.
“What might work in a by-election doesn’t work in a general election.
“There were really undesirable tactics that have been used to try and create the impression of growth.
“We don’t come in as tourists and then leave after a by-election.
“We are intimately connected with these communities because they are our communities.
“We live in them, and we want to see them flourish.”
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