Durban – Despite “lots of acts of intimidation” many people were still turning out for DA rallies in their hundreds, party leader Helen Zille said on Saturday.

 

“The intimidation remains the same and in many instances it’s getting much worse, but what is new is that people refuse to be intimidated and that is really important,” she said at the Ntuzuma community hall in KwaZulu-Natal.

 

Zille claimed that at two events earlier this week in the Eastern Cape, African National Congress supporters had attempted to prevent two DA rallies from taking place – one near Mthatha and another at Fort Hare University in Alice.

 

“The ANC is intimidating us more and more because they are scared that they are going to lose.”

 

“They are very worried about the way the DA is growing, very worried indeed. The more worried they get the more intimidation we will see.”

 

She said the DA would not back down in the face of intimidation.

 

Zille praised the police whom she said had upheld the party’s democratic right to hold meetings.

 

She said she saw no reason why the DA could not win control of the eThekwini Metro [Durban] in the 2016 local government elections.

 

Zille said the party won 23% of the vote in 2011 and had been in a similar situation in Cape Town before it gained control of that municipality in 2006.

 

“KwaZulu-Natal must be the place for the most opportunity for a coalition. All things are possible here.”

 

She received a rousing welcome from supporters in Durban’s Ntuzuma area.

 

Zille, who arrived in the Lindelani area of Ntuzuma was welcomed by about 100 supporters in blue shirts before she visited the homes of two disabled people living in RDP housing.

 

Hand written banners with the slogan “Zille, Our Only Hope” were waved as supporters danced in the street.

 

Dean Macpherson, the DA’s deputy chairperson for the eThekwini region said Zille visited the two disabled people because she wanted to hear from them how they had received their RDP houses that did not have water.

 

Zille promised Nono Ntuli, 72, that she would take her plight to the province’s Premier Senzo Mchunu.

 

Zille received another warm welcome at the Ntuzuma community hall.

 

The hall was packed with about 400 people wearing blue T-shirts.

 

Zille’s visit to the area comes the day before the ANC’s opening rally of its 2014 election campaign on Sunday.

 

Kwamashu and Ntuzuma have for the past decade been ANC strongholds, although in the 1990s the Lindelani area was an Inkatha Freedom Party stronghold.

 

SAPA