Final campaign push by political parties before elections

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Parties ratcheted up their election campaigns on Saturday as they accused each other of failure to deliver where they governed and promised voters to improve service delivery. The ANC sent in its big guns to the Eastern Cape, Gauteng and the Free State in the last stretch before the polls. The DA, EFF and IFP also went all out with their respective leaders on the campaign trail in other parts of the country. ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa campaigned in Uitenhage and party chairperson Gwede Mantashe was in Dordrecht, both in the Eastern Cape. Deputy Jessie Duarte met residents in Khayelitsha and Kraaifontein, in the Western Cape, during a door to door campaign. Duarte urged residents to get out of their houses on May 8 and “follow the ANC to freedom”.

“You should say to the Democratic Alliance phuma! (Get out!).

“And you say ngena ANC, ngena! (Come in ANC, come in!).

“Comrades our message is simple we want change we have to make the change, no one is going to do it for us.

“No miracle is going to happen in the Western Cape, the miracle is you.

“You must go and change what has happened here for the past 25 years,” Duarte said.

In Gauteng, DA leader Mmusi Maimane said voters had to remove the ANC from power.

He said it was not in South Africa’s interest to “give the party that has failed us for 25 years a stronger mandate regardless of what some commentators may write”.

“If we truly want to reform our politics, and thereby reform our country, the best thing we can do is to bring the ANC below 50%,” Maimane said.

At Makhuvha Stadium in rural Vhembe, in Limpopo, EFF leader Julius Malema told a crowd of his supporters they were working with traditional leaders on the issue of land.

He said they had plans to double the social grant received by the elderly because the elderly were the ones taking care of homes and ensuring that the children were fed and said that they should be given more money so that “African children can shine through our grannies”.

IFP premier candidate in KwaZulu-Natal Velenkosini Hlabisa told supporters in Eshowe the ANC had mismanaged the economy and collapsed the education system.

“The ANC has collapsed the education system, they have trashed our economy to junk status, they have pushed away investment, they have overseen a failing health system which too is near collapse,” said Hlabisa.