PRETORIA — With over half of the results in South Africa’s sixth general election now in, the Freedom Front Plus has a surprising strong showing. It is a party that openly says it represents white interest in the country, but it has seen growth among Afrikaans speaking members of the coloured community and more recently black people in the townships have started canvassing members for the Freedom Front Plus. Here’s the chairperson Anton Alberts. – Linda van Tilburg You seem to have quite a good showing from early results. What do you ascribe this to? It’s looks like it’s a good showing. We’ll need to see if the trend continues. We have to be careful not to make too much of it at this stage. But we have seen before the election that there is a groundswell of support for our party. Many people are not happy with the DA anymore. They are moving away from the DA, conservative voters but also voters that like our economic policies because we are free market-oriented party. We believe that the obstacles in the fair market must be removed, including any race-based administration, like affirmative action so that we can get our country going and let the economy fire on all cylinders. We will also create a situation where there is more tax incentives. You know more tax incentives for small businesses, so we can grow small businesses in this country. I think many people, what we have seen within the middle class and upper middle class, people who have their own businesses like that a lot and then of course some people from the poorer communities who like our policies as well regarding cultural protection, minority rights and so forth. So if your electorate or the people who voted for you are basically whites… Mostly white and mostly Afrikaans people you could say. It might have changed a little bit but we also target the colored community. Afrikaans and English-speaking community and we do find that we have English speaking people, Conservative English people now voting for us as well. So most of our voters are colored and white but we do have a very few black people who are just so tired of what’s happening in this country, looking for a completely different alternative and started canvassing out of the townships. So what we did we came to scour the townships to see if there are any points and we are actually doing quite well there. In the initial results in which Province did you do very well? So far Gauteng is very steady and doing well. Most of our votes come from Gauteng, about a third of the party’s votes in the West Vaal scattered all over the country. It looks like the Limpopo and Mpumalanga is doing well. We’re getting seats there that we didn’t have before this stage and North West is also doing well. We are looking at almost a second seat there. So in the Northern Cape we are actually looking at a seat there as well. We have seats everywhere except for KwaZulu Natal and Eastern Cape. So the support is coming from all over the place. As your campaign said just to translate it, Slaan Terug. So fight back. So what are you fighting back from? Well we are asking people to go fight back against corruption and everything that the ANC has dished up in this country with their votes. Some people have taken issue with us and they say but it’s a very aggressive position to take but it’s not designed to be aggressive in a physical sense as we see with the EFF in Parliament. Amongst other things but we are in that environment. But if people read our manifesto, they can see the whole context of fight back. We are saying it is time to fight back. Time to stand and say we have had enough of the looting of the coffers of the Treasury. Eskom that is going to fail. We don’t know if we are going to have load shedding again after this election. Are they able to keep the lights on now but I don’t think it is sustainable. It’s all the ANC’s fault. So it’s time that we strike back and we get to a point where we can form a coalition government with other like minded political parties. So why do you think people moved away from the DA to you? Different reasons. The classical liberal grouping. Some of them have moved to us due to our position on the free market. I think some of them also moved to the South African Capitalist Party and so they were not happy with what’s happening in the DA regarding economic policies but also on race. What the DA has been doing and they don’t want to admit it but they have been basically working with quotas and quoting people based on race which is against the thinking of the free market liberals. You have to judge people on an individual character and not the colour of their skin. So many of those people have left but we have also found that with Mmusi Maimane, he has taken a position very similar to the ANC and the EFF on white privilege and those type of things that white people did not feel comfortable with the DA and were moving into a place where they can find another home. I think they have looked at quite a lot of small parties. They have looked at ACDP. They looked at COPE and they looked at us and I think most of them decided, when we look at the board now, we are the strongest alternative. That is why we are seeing the growth. So for business, the business community that we represent. How would you represent us in Parliament if this community voted for you? First thing we will fight expropriation without compensation with everything in our ability in Parliament and we will even go to court if we have to. We must bring the sunset tours on BBBE affirmative action. We have got to get merit back into the system. Eskom has topped them over because the people with qualifications can run the place and now it’s run by Gupta employees. So we will fight to make sure that the economy is healthy in the sense that there is space to grow. Take the obstacles out of the way and allow the free market to work, except for competition matters you know that there are no monopolies otherwise the free market must run its own course and there must be tax incentives and then we can actually start emulating what’s happening in the United States because whether you like Trump or not, what he has done is he has created an environment where business is doing well and they are doing so well that Canada is actually experiencing the brain drain at the moment because they are going from Canada to the United States and we’ve got to emulate that. That’s the policies that have been proven to work throughout the ages, but unfortunately with the big three parties, The ANC, EFF and the DA all are supporting socialist type projects which will harm our economy and will only redistribute the little that we have without building any wealth and creating no value. So I think from a business perspective, I would dare say that we have one of the best policies out there apart from the ZACP. Do you think it might change? Will it be an early run? Just a quick last one. Ja we have got to be careful with the first number. One tends to get very excited when you see good numbers coming up. There is now about 30% counted more or less. So we have got a way to go and also what is very dangerous for opposition parties is that the rural vote comes in and the rural vote tends to be ANC, then it starts suppressing your numbers. We have done a little bit of research; it is a very low voting percentage in the rural areas turnout. So they might not be able to cancel out the city votes and the suburban vote and that will give us an edge for sure. Thank you for speaking to us. (Visited 85 times, 1 visits today)<doc-sep>Eric Naki FF+ spokesperson Philip van Staden also attributed the good performance to the party stealing votes from the DA. The Freedom Front Plus (FF+) is patting itself on the back over a good showing in eight of the nine provinces, the exception being KwaZulu-Natal. By yesterday afternoon, as the elections ballot count hit 90%, the FF+ had increased its tally, both nationally and provincially, and was fourth or fifth in the eight provinces, with 14 million votes downloaded on the results leader board. The party, led by Pieter Groenewald, overtook both the United Democratic Movement and National Freedom Party to take the fifth-most seats in the National Assembly. FF+ Gauteng member of parliament and spokesperson Philip van Staden was adamant the party’s success was due to its hard work on the ground and adoption of policies that would attract investment and grow the economy. He also attributed the good performance to the party stealing votes from the Democratic Alliance (DA). “We took a good chunk of DA support and that of other parties. “The DA used white voters but made a big mistake with affirmative action and silly statements by its leader, Mmusi Maimane, who said that there was no such thing as white poverty. “Of course there is a lot of poverty among white people, what does he mean?” Van Staden said. The FF+, he said, decided to go back to grassroots and campaign hard prior to the election – and the good results were the proof the strategy worked. Also, its manifesto appealed to many people within its constituency and beyond, including coloureds, Indians and many blacks. Van Staden said: “South Africa needs solutions; we are a party that will bring solutions to its problems in education, healthcare, lack of infrastructure and the economy. “We believe there is a lot of instability in South Africa that cause investors to go away,” Van Staden said. He said the recipe for economic growth was to implement policies that would attract investment and create jobs. The party did not believe in affirmative action but in giving jobs to the best and deserving men and women, regardless of their skin colour. For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.<doc-sep>
The Democratic Alliance (DA) says it was inevitable some of its supporters would leave the party for the Freedom Front Plus JOHANNESBURG – The Democratic Alliance (DA) said that it was inevitable that some of its supporters would leave the party for the Freedom Front Plus after it repositioned itself to not only appeal to minority voters. The FF Plus has doubled its support base this election - currently in fifth place - with 2.46% of the vote. The DA said it wanted to appeal to all South Africans and not only conservative voters. The party's James Selfe explains: “It’s part of the repositioning of the party and we will have to learn the lessons from this election. “We need to engage in certain introspection, we need to see where we lost votes and we need to apply those lessons to the next election campaign.” CLIMBING THE CHARTS The Freedom Front Plus, a party established in the weeks just after the first South Africa democratic elections, has been recording impressive numbers with each election. Currently led by Pieter Groenewald, the party defined itself as the only one “actively taking a stance against the current racial discrimination and a stance for a better dispensation and future”. But it was the party’s support growth at the polls that caught the eyes of many. In the general elections in 1999, it recorded 127,217 votes nationally; since then its support has been growing exponentially. In the following elections in 2004, FF Plus received 139,465 votes and 146,796 in 2009. That steady improvement brought the party to 165,715 in 2014. But by 8:30 pm on Thursday, a day after South Africans cast their ballots in the 2019 general elections, the FF+ was sitting on the fourth spot nationally with 256,166 votes in its bag - with just over 63% of the votes already counted. It said earlier on Thursday that its increase in electoral support in the 2019 general elections was an indication that it was a party for all South Africans. FF+ national head of elections Wouter Wessels told Breakfast with Bongani Bingwa on 702 on Thursday that it wasn’t true the party was only for conservative white people. “I think that myth that is out there that we are an exclusive conservative party, and a party of the past, it is starting to change and this campaign has proven that. Since 2013, we’ve made inroads to actually change the perception of the party. If you go and look at our manifesto, the FF Plus is a party that provides solutions for a better future, not a better past.” During its 2019 electioneering campaign, the party proposed solutions relating to five focus areas: Fight back against expropriation without compensation; Fight back against discrimination; Fight back against crime; Fight back against corruption, misappropriation and excessive taxes and levies - expose and eradicate all forms of corruption and misappropriation; and Fight back against poor service delivery. It said South Africa had faced “nothing but deterioration and despair” under the governing African National Congress (ANC). “The ANC government has shown over the last 25 years that it does not deserve to govern this beautiful country and its people. Its recipe for nation building since 1994 flopped. South Africans truly deserve a new South Africa that will benefit all its people. The FF Plus aspires to a political system based on Christian values that are characterised by the principles of justice, truth, love of one's neighbour, respect for life, loyalty and a peaceful co-existence.” Additional reporting by Winnie Theletsane.