Campaigning for this Wednesday’s by-elections is heating up with all eyes on the new kid on the block, the MK party, as it guns for more seats in its stronghold of KwaZulu-Natal.
Despite numerous hiccups and internal wrangles, the party is winning a number of by-elections, mostly in its KwaZulu-Natal home base.
On April 3, KwaDukuza was the party’s first KwaZulu-Natal by-election win in a ward where they were not the biggest party in 2024. MK have now also won two wards in the province off the ANC in less than a month.
Service delivery issues will be top of mind in what will be a short week before the Easter weekend, with 11 candidates from eight political parties and an independent candidate contesting by-elections set to take place in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.
Ward six in the Rand West City municipality will be contested by five political party candidates, including from the Freedom Front Plus, ANC, DA and EFF. It became vacant after the death of a councillor.
Ward 110 in the eThekwini municipality will be contested by six political party candidates, including from the ANC, DA, NFP and MK, and an independent after the ward became vacant due to the termination of councillor’s membership from a party.
The presidency will on Wednesday conduct an oversight visit to the Eastern Cape and meet its provincial leadership.
The Eastern Cape, a largely rural province, remains one of the poorest in SA with high unemployment, poor service delivery and a high prevalence of fruitless and wasteful expenditure. Many of its municipalities are among SA’s worst performing.
While parliament remains in recess, there is an important discussion in the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) on Tuesday by the Film and Publication Board on harmful content brought by social media and other online platforms and measures to counter them.
Also on Tuesday, the SA Post Office is expected to brief the NCOP on its financial sustainability.
On the issue of the national budget on Wednesday, the NCOP will continue public hearings on the 2025 Division of Revenue Bill and 2025 Appropriation Bill before the vote on these matters later this year.
On Monday the ANC and DA will reflect on their weekend meeting as they formulate ways forward on the National Treasury’s proposal for a 0.5 percentage point VAT increase.
The ANC’s national executive committee and the DA’s federal council are meeting later this month. Both are the highest decision-making bodies of the parties during national conferences.
The Easter weekend public holiday kicks off on Friday with thousands of church members attending church services countrywide.
Politicians usually take advantage of these gatherings at places such as Moria for the Zion Christian Church and Mt Nhlangakazi, the headquarters of the Nazareth Baptist Church (Shembe) to campaign and this year will be no different. More so considering the 2026 local government elections are around the corner.
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