Karima Brown
3 December 2008
Johannesburg — AFRICAN National Congress (ANC) president Jacob Zuma says coloured working-class and poor people in Western Cape hold the key to an election victory for the party in next year's general elections.
Zuma's views are a departure from those of ANC provincial leaders, who in the past paid scant attention to organising in poor coloured communities on the Cape Flats. They concentrated the party's efforts in strongholds such as Khayelitsha, Gugulet u and Langa. This approach was informed by the argument that the black population would increase over time, given migration from Eastern Cape into Western Cape, and that the ANC need not concern itself with communities that historically did not vote for it.
Now the ANC would have to compete with the Democratic Alliance and the Independent Democrats for the urban coloured vote.
Zuma's comments to Business Day suggest a change in strategy, which would have to be sold to ANC provincial leaders.
"We need to focus on the coloured community. They are the majority and decide which way the Western Cape (may) go," Zuma said.
He said a meeting with Allan Boesak and other former United Democratic Front (UDF) leaders, Afrikaans religious leaders and trade union leaders such as Cosatu's Tony Ehrenreich and Ebrahim Patel of the South African Clothing and Textile Workers Union was in line with the ANC decision to "reconnect" with the mass democratic movement and activists who were active in the ANC in the past.
"We are paying attention to the coloured working (class and) poor coloureds. It's my view that people who have been active in the ANC in the past must be brought back and their activity revived," Zuma said. "Part of this group are people like comrade Allan Boesak, who we have not given a chance."
Boesak and others had an advantage as the coloured community was "their base". They had support which the ANC had to acknowledge in its bid to draw in leaders of these communities.
"People like Allan Boesak have support. He is a church leader. For the ANC it's important to reach this community."
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