Pretoria - Many voters in ward 22 in Mabopane where the late ANC councillor candidate Tshepo Motaung was shot dead in the run-up to the election, say they were casting their ballot with heavy hearts.
They told the Pretoria News that Motaung's untimely death had brought a sense of despondency in the community.
However, residents said they were encouraged by the work that he had done for them, and eager to vote for the new councillor candidate Kate Mamma Mabasa in the hope that she would take up Motaung's baton.
Motaung was gunned down on September 24 in what is believed to have been a politically motivated killing. Voting got-off to a slow start in one of the ward’s polling stations in the Odi district where voters, mainly the elderly, queued to cast their ballots early in the morning.
An 80-year-old, Martha Mokomme who stays in a settlement called Midas, remarked that yesterday's election did not elicit much excitement like the first democratic ones in 1994.
Mokomme, who was ferried to the voting station in a taxi organised by the ANC, said all she was asking for through her vote was a proper roof over her head.
“I would like to see change. I would like the government to build me a house and relocate me from my shack,” she said.
She lamented that sh e had voted “for all these years but we are yet to see changes in our lives”.
On Motaung's assassination, she said: “I felt so disappointed because of Motaung’s death because we were very close.”
Koketso Motla, 35, said Motaung's death was bad news for the community. However, she took solace in the fact that a female councillor candidate would be representing the ANC as the she would understand the plight of woman.
Motla said she was a dejected voter because “these political parties are failing. We are only voting for the sake of voting”.
She was recently disappointed by the work criteria used by the Gauteng Department of Education which excluded job seekers over the age of 35 for teaching assistants posts.
Meanwhile, the DA Tshwane mayoral candidate, Randall Williams, voted at the NG Kerk in Lynnwood.
Williams was positive that in all the DA strongholds the turnout would be good.
Asked about the possibility of the DA co-governing the metro with other parties and his preferred coalition partners, he said: “There is one party that we are definitely not going to get into coalition with. (But) that is my personal view. These decisions are taken at a national level.” He said that after 2016, the DA formed a coalition with Cope, FF plus and the ACDP.
"We had 47% the vote and then there was an arrangement with the EFF that on the morning of the election they would determine on a case by case basis which way they would vote to give us that 50%," Williams said.
But the arrangement with the EFF led to “an unstable government” because at times the party would decide not to vote with the DA.
Premier David Makhura voted at a Centurion polling station in ward 106, where he has been a voter for 10 years.
He called on the South Africans, especially the 6 million in Gauteng, to vote in large numbers.
He was particularly happy with the smooth-running voting process and tweeted: “I have exercised my democratic right, and I urge all Gauteng citizens to come out in their large numbers and vote. Let’s not take this right lightly as many made a supreme sacrifice for us to shape the direction of our communities.”
Pretoria News