Following Dave Bryant’s move to the National Assembly in September, residents of Ward 115, which includes Mouille Point, Green Point, parts of Gardens, the CBD, Woodstock, Salt River and District 6, will decide who will be their ward councillor in a by-election on Wednesday December 9.
Six parties will be contesting for the ward and the candidates are Mogamat Nuril Anwa Peters of the ANC, Nazmie Jamodien of Al Jama-Ah, Ian Patrick Mc Mahon of the DA, Anwar Adams of the Democratic Independent Party (DIP), Nonkosazana Mzotsho of the EFF and Joy Davids from the GOOD Party.
The Independent Electoral Commission stated that the voter turnout for this ward in the 2016 municipal elections was 76.19% and the DA candidate won the ward with 94.61% of the valid vote.
Mr Mc Mahon is the chairperson of the DA Ward 115 Branch Committee. He has lived in the area for over 20 years and is a long-standing community activist, serving as chairperson of De Waterkant Civic Association for six years. Among his priorities, he stated that he will drive the CBD Economic Recovery Plan, maintain and improve service delivery, prioritise homelessness, and help keep the ward clean and safe.
“I’ll make it my priority to maintain and improve basic service delivery in Ward 115, engaging with the community to listen and address their concerns, as well as working with ratepayer associations and Service Ratings Agencies to ensure accountable and excellent local government service delivery,” he said.
For the GOOD party, Ms Davids said her family lived in District 6 and her parents home was one of the last to be demolished on the land around the Fruit and Veg City site in the CBD.
After working in the UK and later for World Vision, she is back working in the CBD, in the streets her family were removed from. She said she is seeking to unite residents across the neighbourhoods of Ward 115 – working and living together in the way her dad described District 6.
“The day I joined politics was the day that I committed myself to the community and society as a whole. Do Good unto others as you would have them do unto you. It’s about how you treat others, with dignity, respect and kindness and not expecting anything in return,” she said.
The ANC’s Mr Peters said he has always had a passion to do something good for the community. He said he identifies with a badge that stands for the community and the working class. “My commitment is 150% and I’m ready to serve the communities. Ward 115 is a massive ward, there’s different sides, a rich side and a struggling side. You have people living under the bridges under this ward, we need to do something about that,” he said.
He said his priority is to have the community living in harmony and showing compassion to those less fortunate. He said there’s a gentrification issue around the Biscuit Mill and those are things that need to be addressed. “People are trying to get back to District 6, we need to address that. There are issues of vagrancy, crime and we need the vacant land to be used for social housing,” he said. He said they understand that the affluent suburbs also have their problems and they will have to earn their trust.
Efforts to reach Al-Jamah, DIP and EFF were unsuccessful.
