ANC President Jacob Zuma urged Tembisa residents in Ekurhuleni to use their vote in upcoming local elections like their white counterparts.
Speaking to residents on Wednesday during the ANC’s elections campaign in the area, Zuma stresssed that every resident should go out and vote on August 3, and they [residents] should encourage even those who support other political parties to vote for the ANC. “You see white people are not many but they go out to vote in their numbers because they understand the importance of voting,” said Zuma.
Zuma warned Tembisa residents to change the mentality that black people make up the majority of the population and therefore it is not important for everyone to go out and cast their vote.
“Do not say we are many and ‘I’m not going to vote because we are winning anyway’, everyone’s vote is important,” said Zuma.
The ANC president spent the day campaigning in different parts of Tembisa, the second biggest township in Gauteng. He also visited hostel dwellers and had a meeting with local chiefs before addressing a group of ANC supporters at a local soccer field. Zuma urged ANC supporters to stop fighting among themselves because that is only to please ‘those who control the wealth’ of this country. “Let’s rather use our vote to get a piece of the wealth.”
Zuma also lambasted opposition parties for having nothing to offer South Africans but instead just to sit in Parliament. He once again criticised the Democratic Alliance as the party of the oppressors and said he doesn’t understand why Mmusi Maimane, as a black person, would want to be associated with such a party.
Zuma also urged the people of Tembisa not to waste their vote on the Economic Freedom Fighters because the party was based on nothing other than revenge, as their leaders were expelled from the ANC.
“The ANC expelled them for disrespect, and they are busy disrespecting Parliament and showing the world, now they turn around and ask for your vote.”
The ANC president was flanked by the party’s Ekurhuleni’s mayoral candidate Mzwandile Masina who called for government to build a university in the metropolitan. “We are the only metropolitan that doesn’t have a university, we want our own university so our young people don’t have travel far,” said Masina. He also promised, once voted in as mayor, to provide electricity to over 100 informal settlements in Ekurhuleni and build 100 000 houses in five years.