Why DA will not benefit from dismemberment of the Nats

Tonight the Great Council Migration begins again. For two weeks councillors across the country have some chance to change parties. This will be the second time this has happened since the elections of 2000.

The majority of those who cross the floor this time have done it before. This is because the largest number of floor crossers are New National Party councillors - none of whom were elected to that party in 2000, but who 'rejoined' the party in 2001. The NNP now has stated its intention of merging with the African National Congress, and is 'encouraging' its councillors and members also to join them.

Some NNP leaders, including FW de Klerk and Johann Swanepoel, decried the merger. In most cases their political preference was honourable retirement from politics. This is only an easy option for someone who is near or past the end of their political career. No NNP politician has said that they prefer to rejoin the Democratic Alliance. Politics are too polarised for that kind of public declaration.

There is next to no chance that even a minority of NNP councillors will cross the floor to the DA this time around, for at least three reasons:

1. The fracture between the NNP and the DA is too sensitive: indeed there are NNP councillors who would be refused the DA whip even if they asked for it, such as Cllr Kevin Momberg of Atlantis near Cape Town.


2. Any councillors who plan to cross the floor to another party must be one of a group of at least 10% of the sitting membership of the originating party. In Cape Town, for example, at least three NNP councillors must agree to cross to the DA in order for any NNP councillors to do so. This degree of coordination - and trust - makes the challenge much harder if the floor crossing destination is not party-approved.


3. NNP councillors are under a more severe whip now that perhaps they have ever been - the infamous ANC discipline as well as the NNP whip. Already they have been asked to sign loyalty pledges more than once. It was reported on Cape Talk this morning that thirty-five floor crossing applications by NNP councillors to the ANC are already signed and waiting for this evening's peregrinations; and as soon as those documents are submitted to the Independent Electoral Commission those councillors mayn't change their minds.

In a few more isolated councils around the country, where the number of NNP councillors is small, the DA may benefit. In the metropolitan areas, particularly in Cape Town, NNP councillors will all go to the ANC.

The risk of the DA losing councillors to other parties is also very small. The DA has, in the Western Cape, large numbers of councillors with whips made strong by the last exodus of NNP councillors in 2001. Morale is not good in DA caucuses, but it's not bad to the degree of an organised split.

Gerrymandering Blaauwberg - ward 104

In order that you know how the Municipal Demarcation Board plans fundamentally to alter the representation of Table View, Milnerton and Atlantis, I must show the picture as it stands.

The wards I'm interested in for this review are the wards that make up the old Blaauwberg municipality, which are presently known as the Blaauwberg administration of the Cape Town Unicity. In 2000, wards 1 through 5, 54 and 55 were contested and won by the Democratic Alliance. The Blaauwberg administration was won in a clean sweep by the DA.

That it might not happen again is not enough in itself for grievance: politics and demographics can change and, in this case, they have changed.

Politically: Back in 2000, the DA had just been created. No NNP contested the election, and this left the DA without practical opposition in the middle-class and white areas of the city. In 2005 the situation is different - the NNP has left the DA and merged with the ANC, and the DA faces credible opposition, on the face of it, from the Independent Democrats and the African Christian Democratic Party in middle-class and white suburbs.

Demographically: Milnerton was nearly entirely a middle-class area in 2000. Today, the low-cost housing areas of Phoenix and Joe Slovo, adjoining Milnerton to the east, add many thousands of working-class or unemployed coloured and black citizens to the voting pattern. Even in 2000, Dunoon housing estate and Doornbach squatter camps were important sources of ANC support. Today these suburbs have grown dramatically. Together they account for a third of the registered voters of what is now ward 3, and these voters are almost entirely ANC supporters. These two areas together contain four voting districts (VDs) which have 9013 registered voters.

Since the population of these areas has grown so much, and since the distribution of probable voters has also changed, it only makes sense to redraw the electoral boundaries of the Blaauwberg administration to give all these people proportional representation. It's the job of the supposedly independent Municipal Demarcation Board to make decisions about the changes in the boundaries.

A credible and democratic allocation of seats in Blaauwberg must contain wards delimited in such a way that the ANC would win them. How else will the people of Phoenix, Joe Slovo, Doornbach and Dunoon elect the councillors they want? 9013 voters in Doornbach and Dunoon are nearly enough voters to sustain a ward on their own - the minimum number of voters seems to be about 11000 per ward.

What must be avoided is the temptation to cut the boundaries of wards so that concentrations of ANC voters corral groups of DA voters so that predominantly DA areas are overwhelmed by an artificially large number of ANC voters. Wards created in this way have long and meandering boundaries, and have no geographical or demographic unity. The creation of stretched and distorted wards for political advantage is known as the practice of gerrymandering.

This effect is most clearly seen in the MDB's proposals for Table View. Dunoon and Doornbach are used as ANC anchors to capture and disenfranchise about a third of the centre of Table View, in their proposed ward 104.

Doornbach and Dunoon are on the east of the picture, in the conspicuous bulge. Outside of the bulge, on the other side of the Rietvlei river, is traditional DA country - the entirety of the rest of the proposed ward is young, middle-class, kids-at-primary-school DA voters. As it stands, this specially engineered ward will go to the ANC.

Removal of restrictions for Vissershok dump

The Cape Town municipality gazetted a public notice in today's Cape Times. It calls for objections to be lodged with the Director of Land Development Management, P.B. X9086, Cape Town 8000 before 5th October this year with respect to the following:

Ref: LC CFM 153
Applicant: City of Cape Town
Nature of application: Removal of a restrictive title condition applicable to Cape Farm 153, Vissershok, Cape Town, to rezone the property from Rural to Noxious Industry, to legalise the existing waste disposal site & associated noxious industrial uses.

For many years the residents of Morning Star and Vissershok have lived hard by what amounts to an informal waste site they call the Vissershok dump. Among other problems there are apparently unacceptably high levels of mercury in the ground water; those locals who use water drawn from boreholes or well points were at risk.

To this stage there have been moves either to relocate the dump - and presumably closing the present site - or to formalise the present site. It appears the council has decided to take the second option.

Despite appearances the formalisation of the dump site may be a good thing, for some at any rate. The dump's presence effectively prevents the local landowners from selling their land. They hold out the hope that the city government will be forced to establish a buffer zone surrounding the dump, which will require the municipality to buy their farms from them.

Others may not be so lucky. There are many homeless people and shack-dwellers in the area. Some of them live physically next to the dump. Their lot will not be improved just because the area is officially toxic.

I'll update you once I've spoken to some of the locals.

Gerrymandering the 2005 Cape Town election

After the weekend, my analysis of the Municipal Demarcation Board's gerrymandering of the 2005 local government election in Cape Town, with special consideration for Table View.