DA welcomes announcement of LGE date

21 April 2021

Please find attached a soundbite by the Leader of the Democratic Alliance, John Steenhuisen MP.

The Democratic Alliance welcomes this evening’s announcement that South Africa’s Local Government Elections will indeed proceed on 27 October 2021.

Free, fair, and regular elections are the bedrock of our constitutional democracy and the DA is delighted that South Africans will get an opportunity to exercise their hard-won right to vote later this year.

Nothing is more important to our nation than the freedom to vote, especially when South Africa has spent over a year under the harshest and longest lockdowns in the world as government has failed to adequately respond to the coronavirus pandemic.

The fact that government has completely botched the roll out of a comprehensive and effective vaccination strategy in our country, the only way out of this devastating lockdown, has provided voters with the perfect opportunity to head to the polls. It is high time for South Africans to fire failing ANC governments.

South Africa stands on the precipice of economic ruin with the highest unemployment rate in the world, deep-set government corruption with no accountability, and absolute policy uncertainty. It is this vacuum of leadership, transparency, and integrity that the DA is ready to fill.

The DA has stabilized and is swiftly gaining momentum as our message of change begins to resonate with more and more citizens across South Africa. We are ready to contest the Local Government Elections later this year in thousands of wards across the country where we want to bring real change to all South Africans and deliver the government that our country so deserves.

Issued by John Steenhuisen, DA Federal Leader, 21 April 2021