George by-elections: The aftermath

GEORGE POLITICAL NEWS - The Good party made history in George when its first member was elected to serve on the city council. Richard Hector is the new ward councillor of Ward 27.

The DA managed to secure three wards (14, 8 and 17) and remains in power. The new DA ward councillors are as follows: Brendon Adams (Ward 17), Pastor Melvin Roelfse (Ward 14) and Bazil Petrus (Ward 8).

George Speaker Gerrit Pretorius confirmed this morning, Thursday 12 November, that the new members of council will be welcomed at the next council meeting. A date has not yet been scheduled. Pretorius said he is waiting for official confirmation of the IEC.

“We’re ecstatic,” said Good party secretary-general Brett Herron, who congratulated Hector in a statement earlier this morning.

Tertuis Simmers, the DA East Region chairperson, thanked the voters of wards 8, 14 and 17 for their continued majority support. “We also thank our voters in Ward 27 for their support,” he said. On the loss of Ward 27, Simmers said the following: “While we could not maintain voters' mandate for Ward 27, we can assure voters that the DA-controlled George Municipality will continue to serve you. These by-elections were very challenging.”

Despite their losses, opposition parties are still upbeat about the results.

Major Sokopo, ANC regional secretary, said they have seen the results. “We have seen where we must go to work to improve in 2021. People have seen the DA is not a good governing party, there need to be alternatives on the table to service the people.”

Gert van Niekerk, FF Plus regional coordinator, said the by-elections taught them a lot. “We are relatively satisfied. The outcome is more or less as we anticipated. This is the first time we have really entered and marketed these constituencies,” he said.

“In 2019, we increased from 0,4% to 5,66% in Ward 8; and increased in Ward 14 from 0,91% to 7,4%; in Ward 17 from 0,28% to 1,69% and in Ward 27 we are up from 1,29% to 2,76%.”

Van Niekerk said a large percentage of people did not come to vote - almost 60%. “This still shows that the people are very apathetic towards politics. We foresaw that the DA was going to fall tremendously, and it happened. The achievements of Good and the PBI are an indication that the DA has done itself a great deal of damage.”

EFF regional media liaison officer Hein Scheepers said the party is happy with the results as it shows improvement from 2016 and 2019 in certain wards.

“We do acknowledge that we started the race late. In Wards 8 and 17 we managed to get better results than the ANC.” Scheepers said the EFF will be prepared for the mayoral election race of George next year.

DA Councillor for Ward 14, Past. Melvin Roelfse. Photo Michelle Pienaar