Election Wrap: SouthAfricaBlog’s Candidate Trounced
Mickey Munden had a cold shower this morning – and not just because the city turned off his geyser (a.k.a., hot water heater) in the wee hours. No, the main source of Mickey’s distress was that his party, the Mickey Munden Liberation Font (sic) failed to gain even one seat on Cape Town’s city council.
The big winner on Wednesday was – the ID, which took something like 11% of the vote in its first local government election. Congrats to Patricia de Lille & Co.
The ANC, meanwhile, took a dive in Cape Town (though it thrashed all comers everywhere else), and appears to have lost the council seats required to govern the city, while its chief rivals, the DA, garnered the most votes but failed to win an outright majority.
- See the Mail & Guardian’s intriguing election blogs, written by the pols themselves.
Ja, BORING, you say, what you really want to know is how the city turned off Mickey’s geyser? To save electricity during the current power crisis, the power officials sent a surge through parts of its grid, strong enough to trip hot water switches, but not so strong as to take out the lights. It’s saving quite a lot of wattage in this manner, apparently, which helps it manage the city’s overall electricity shortcomings, and simultaneously turns people so angry that they achieve self-cleaning temperatures, and don’t need to shower in the first place.
Returning to the issue at hand, it appears that Cape Town will have a fractured system of governance over the next five years, since all the parties hold one another in low regard, and are currently refusing to form coalitions. This might actually be a good thing for the city, however, because single-party governance has not exactly generated smooth sailing in the past.
Full Cape Town election stats:
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- This post closes SA Blog’s coverage of the 2006 Local Government Elections.