Despite lagging in poll results, EFF confident of achieving growth in KZN

DURBAN - Despite only having scored a handful of votes in KwaZulu-Natal so far, the Economic Freedom Fighter’s (EFF) provincial premier candidate, Mongezi Twala, remains optimistic about how the party will end up faring in the province in these elections.

The most recent update positions the EFF with just over 5,500 votes on the provincial ballot, putting them fifth in line at this point.

This with some 254,000, around 12% of the province’s votes captured so far.

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As it stands, the 5,500 votes the EFF has at the moment equate to around just 2% of the total number captured so far.

And they’re, of course, hoping to secure a significantly larger portion when all's said and done, having got almost 10% in the last elections.

But the refrain we’re hearing from political leaders across the board is that it’s still early days and they’re waiting on the big hubs’ results, which always take a little longer to capture than the smaller towns and the rural areas, Mongezi Twala included.

"We are fairly doing well because the numbers we see here are mostly coming from rural areas, so we’re hopeful our numbers will grow significantly from this because on the last elections, we were on 350,000 votes. We have our areas where we are traditionally very strong, like eThekwini, Newcastle, Ladysmith, Port Shepstone, so those numbers are still coming. We are confident we are going to grow in KZN."

As for the other major players here in KZN, at the moment the MK Party is still leading the pack, with a staggering 109,000 votes so far, followed by the African National Congress (ANC), the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and then the Democratic Alliance (DA).