DA retains Kouga and wins Umgeni with outright majorities

The DA has won an outright majority in the uMngeni municipality in KwaZulu-Natal, its first historic win in the ANC-controlled province.

It has also won the Kouga municipality in the Eastern Cape, allowing it to maintain control of its showpiece municipality in the province.

Addressing the media, Steenhuisen said the DA’s win in uMngeni would serve as a beachhead for further advances into the province. The DA won 54.67% of the vote in the municipality and the ANC 35.3%, which he said indicated that the people were willing to give the DA a chance to govern and deliver services. Steenhuisen noted that uMngeni faced huge service delivery challenges such as water, housing and sanitation.

He also noted that the DA had so far taken eight wards off the ANC in the eThekwini municipality, including Newlands East.

Steenhuisen said that based on the party’s internal monitoring of Monday’s local election results, the DA would have 16 seats on the Kouga municipal council, the ANC 11, and the FF Plus, the Patriotic Alliance and the EFF one each.

According to the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) results dashboard, the DA received 54.99% of the votes in Kouga, the ANC 36.23%, the Patriotic Alliance 1.55%, the FF Plus 3.25% and the EFF 1.77%. The IEC hasn’t calculated seat allocations yet.

“From the most recent data that has come out it [Kouga] is the most well run local municipality in the Eastern Cape and I think it is a testimony to the DA’s excellent work there over the last five years that we can return to office there and that we will continue to govern there with our own outright majority for the next five years,” Steenhuisen said. “It is a huge vote of confidence in mayor Horatio Hendricks and his entire team.”

The municipality has spearheaded alternative energy projects and pioneered the first plastic road in the country. It is located west of Nelson Mandela Bay, and forms part of the Sarah Baartman district municipality. It consists of nine towns — Jeffreys Bay, Humansdorp, St Francis Bay, Cape St Francis, Oyster Bay, Patensie, Hankey, Loerie and Thornhill, as well as various smaller settlements and agricultural nodes.

The municipality has traditionally relied on tourism and agriculture, but has begun to position itself as an energy hub with two wind farms already operational at Jeffreys Bay and Oyster Bay, and more are in the pipeline.

Kouga is also home to Thyspunt, one of the preferred sites for  a new nuclear power station.

ensorl@businesslive.co.za