Johannesburg – With 30 days until the national elections, political parties are pushing full steam ahead with their campaigns.
On Sunday, most parties focused their main campaigning efforts on Gauteng’s biggest townships.
ANC
In KwaZulu-Natal, President Jacob Zuma launched a multi-billion rand housing project in Cornubia, Durban.
“The entire Cornubia development has an estimated construction value of R25bn over a period of approximately 25 years,” said Zuma.
“The project will include the provision of 28 000 homes catering for a wide range of income levels.
“A total of 15 000 of these will be subsidised or low income houses,” said Zuma.
He reminded the locals of Solomon Mahlangu who was killed by the apartheid government exactly 35 years ago on Sunday.
“That is the South Africa we have emerged from, where the state had the right to kill and destroy the lives of many, including young people,” said Zuma.
ANCYL
The African National Congress’s Youth League (ANCYL) also met in Mamelodi, east of Pretoria to commemorate Mahlangu.
The SABC reported that the youth was expected to visit Mahlangu’s grave site, the Solomon Mahlangu Square and his home which government recently announced would be turned into a museum.
EFF
Meanwhile, the ANCYL’s former president Julius Malema kept scores of his supporters waiting for him for hours on end in Kliptown, Soweto.
Malema, who now heads the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), was scheduled to have addressed his followers at around 10:00.
“When is he coming, we’ve been waiting in the sun, we’re even getting dark,” a man who gave only his first name Tshepo said.
But most of the EFF supporter’s spirits were not dampened as they continued to dance and sing praise songs of their leader.
When Malema finally arrived in the afternoon, he told residents their area was a symbolic definition of what poverty looked like.
“People of Kliptown don’t know what freedom and democracy is. Freedom is a house, how do you have freedom if you share a room with your kids? When you go to bed hungry? When you don’t have a local clinic in an area where the Freedom Charter was adopted?.”
He said the ruling party should be ashamed.
DA
The Democratic Alliance took to the streets in Tembisa, Gauteng.
Led by the party’s Gauteng premier candidate Mmusi Maimane, the party held a march along the streets of the East Rand township.
The procession went along several streets with the marchers waving blue placards saying: “Together for change” and “Together for jobs”.
Echoing Malema’s views, Maimane said the people of Tembisa lived in terrible conditions and Zuma’s livestock had better living conditions than the township’s community.
“Our people in Tembisa wonder where the development is. Around here our grandmothers are digging their own toilets,” said Maimane.
“There is no progress here. South Africans cannot find work.”
Meanwhile, DA leader, Helen Zille led an anti-drug march in Mitchells Plain, Cape Town.
Joined by around 100 people, mostly women and children, they marched from Atletiek Street in Beacon Valley to the police station.
“We are asking for more police on the street. We are asking for the reinstating of the gang and drug unit that was scrapped… and we are looking for the army to be brought in,” said Zille.
Cope
The Congress of the People focused its campaigning in the north of Johannesburg at the Alexander township.
The SABC reported that the party said it wanted to lodge a complaint with the SA Human Rights Commission about the poor conditions of the overcrowded women’s hostel in the area.
The hostel was constructed to accommodate 2 000 women but had 3 000 living there.
– SAPA
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