De Lille puts Herron forward for Cape Town mayor as GOOD launches provincial manifesto

The GOOD Party wants the next City of Cape Town government to put poor households at the centre of its budget, and it has named the man it wants to run the city. Party leader Patricia de Lille told supporters in Athlone on the Cape Flats that Brett Herron is the right candidate for mayor, describing him as a lawyer with experience in both national and provincial Parliament who understands how government works.

De Lille delivered the party’s Western Cape election manifesto at the weekend event, where she said the city needs to return to a version of itself that cares about poor and vulnerable residents and deals with redress. The SABC reported the manifesto launch and her remarks.

What de Lille said about Herron

De Lille said Herron’s legal training and his time in the national and provincial legislatures had prepared him for the city’s top job. She framed his candidacy as a continuation of the work she says was under way when she led Cape Town, and as a shift in the city’s priorities towards residents who have the least.

“Brett has got the experience, he’s a lawyer by profession, he has also served at national Parliament and provincial Parliament. He understands how government works,” she said. “And therefore, you know, to pick up where we left off in 2018, and try and bring the city ship back to being caring more about the poor people, the vulnerable people, deal with redress: that is Brett’s mission. And I, of course, will give him all the support that we can get.”

De Lille led Cape Town for eight years under the Democratic Alliance before leaving that party. Her endorsement of Herron is the clearest signal yet of how GOOD intends to contest the metro, where the DA has held power and where the party will need to convert dissatisfaction with service delivery into votes.

The pitch to the Cape Flats

Holding the launch in Athlone was not incidental. The Cape Flats carries the city’s densest concentration of working class and poor households, and it is the ground on which any claim to be a pro-poor party will be tested. A manifesto promise to care more about poor people is easy to make in a hall. It becomes real in the budget line for informal settlement upgrading, in the waiting list for a council house, in whether a family in Gugulethu can get a water connection repaired in the same week it breaks.

For voters in those areas, the practical question is what a GOOD-run city would do differently on housing, electricity, sanitation and the cost of getting to work. The manifesto sets out the party’s answer. Whether it survives contact with a council chamber that includes the DA, the ANC and a growing field of smaller parties is the harder question.

The other message from the platform

De Lille also used the Athlone event to speak about gender-based violence, telling communities that silence protects perpetrators and calling for closer cooperation between residents and police in tackling it. That is a message that lands differently on the Cape Flats than in a party conference hall, because it is addressed to neighbours and families rather than to an institution.

What happens next

The Western Cape goes to the polls with the City of Cape Town as the prize. GOOD’s manifesto gives the party its platform and de Lille’s endorsement gives it a candidate. The campaign now moves to the wards, where the argument about who the city is for will be settled by residents who have heard the promise before.

Source: SABC News (website), GOOD Party calls for a ‘pro-poor’ City of Cape Town