Abstract
D.Litt. et Phil.
The Western Cape and the UniCity of Cape Town are the only remaining province and metropolitan municipality that have not been won by the ANC since the advent of democratic elections in 1994. The ANC won the Cape Town substructure, one out of six former sub-councils of the Cape Metropolitan Area (CMA) in the 1996. It is the Cape Metropolitan Municipality (i.e. former CMA) which is referred to as the UniCity of Cape Town in this research. The first and only time the ANC controlled the UniCity of Cape Town was between 2002 and 2006. This was as a result of the floor-crossing and the coalition between the NNP and ANC in 2002. The Western Cape is also the only province in which the NNP, DA1, ANC and the DA2 have alternated between 1994 and 2008. These two factors make the Western Cape and the UniCity of Cape Town the most hotly contested areas in South Africa. This political competition has led to accusations and counter-accusations among political parties that parties that have governed the Western Cape and the UniCity of Cape Town have used the allocation of housing services with the intention of achieving personal or party-political interests.
The objective of this research has been to apply a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate whether there is evidence to suggest that those political parties that governed the Western Cape and the UniCity of Cape Town between 1994 and 2008 have used the allocation of housing services to further party-political interests. The two leading questions were whether the political parties that governed the UniCity of Cape Town between 1994 and 2008 skewed the allocation of low-cost housing in favour of their supporters, and, if so, how political-party affiliation has affected the access to the housing services of voters in the Western Cape and the UniCity of Cape Town.
The methodology used by the researcher is mainly a combination of the analysis of all available electronic and printed material and extensive interviews with the residents of Joe Slovo and Delft areas. In-depth interviews have also been conducted with leaders of community-based organisations, unions, academics and leaders of political parties. The analysis shows that all political parties that governed the Western Cape and the UniCity of Cape Town between 1994 and 2008 have
deliberately targeted those suburbs in which their supporters are in the majority and in which the supporters of their rival parties are in the minority. The analysis in this research also shows that affiliation to political party has affected respondents’ access to housing services. The main recommendation is that political parties should be encouraged not to use party affiliation to determine who get goods/services provided by government in a democratic society.