"COPE scavenger Boesak should get his figures right - DA on track to win WC in election"
The discredited Congress of the People (COPE) Western Cape Premier candidate Alan Boesak - a sloppy second choice that his fledgling party will certainly come to regret - has a highly suspect history when it comes to figures and has even landed himself in prison for it.
Yet he is now prancing around in front of the media with grossly overstated numbers of DA "members" that allegedly crossed over to his party from the DA in Nqumbela, Robertson and the surrounding area. This clearly shows that Boesak has not learnt his lesson; that he is the proverbial old dog that can't learn new tricks.
The DA never even had 800 card-carrying members in the area in question. It is a disgrace that Boesak could lie like this, and I challenge him to prove the that he did not do so.
This is a desperate attempt by COPE to draw attention to itself in a province where does not come close to standing a chance to win, or even to become a king-maker. The fact of the matter is that the DA is the only party that can win this province, and we are right on track to a handsome majority, perhaps even an absolute majority.
This will be a hard-won battle for the DA. Each and every member, volunteer and activist has contributed to it. And so, when in the vagaries of electioneering politics we lose some of those hard-won friends, it does hurt.
But COPE has learnt its lesson before and it will learn its lesson again and again. It simply does not have the structures on the ground to keep the support that it tries to scavenge from the DA with Boesak's politics of empty rhetoric, empty promises, untruths, fear and race.
In Kwanokutula, Plettenberg Bay, where COPE went and scavenged away friends from the DA in the ward under independent councilor Memory Booysen earlier this year, our former friends there started to return to the DA slowly but surely - this time not only as friends, but as t-shirt wearing, membership card-carrying DA activists.
These activists have learnt from their mistake and will serve us well, especially in the run up to the 2011 local government election, when the fruits of their labour will be there for all to see.
The same will happen in Nqumbela, Robertson and the surrounding areas where the DA will triumph in 2011.
Perhaps COPE and Boesak should rather shift their focus to the joint opposition effort to take votes away from the ANC - an area where COPE has not performed to expectations in the Western Cape.
This is an excerpt from a speech by Western Cape Democratic Alliance leader, Theuns Botha, at a breakfast meeting in Gansbaai, April 2 2009
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