PA, FF Plus stand by ‘identity politics’ strategies, but are open to grow beyond them

JOHANNESBURG - While former President Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party has gone to great lengths to deny it’s an ethno-nationalist organisation, the Patriotic Alliance (PA) is unapologetic in its approach of using race-based politics to grow its support.

The PA says its base is Coloured people – this rings true for the Freedom Front Plus (FF Plus), which focuses its attention on White Afrikaners.

According to political leaders and analysts, identity politics have won these elections.

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This with the two biggest victors of these polls – the MK Party and the PA – both having mobilised along ethnic lines.

But it doesn’t stop there. This is also the case with the FF Plus when it comes to Afrikaners, and the Democratic Alliance (DA) with Whites.

The PA’s head of strategy, Charles Cilliers, said the party was born out of a need for an organisation that would put the interests of coloured people first.

"From the outset, those of us that started the PA were aware that coloured nationalism was brewing, but it hadn’t really exploded or taken form and that somebody was going to come into that. You see it with the Cape Coloured Congress - they also want to tap into that coloured frustration and nationalism."

FF Plus president Pieter Groenewald says the party's identity politics happens across the world.

"We don’t deny that the majority of our voter base are Afrikaners, that we know, but we are a political party of merit. We have our principles and we have had them all the time."

Both parties said while they wanted to keep their respective bases, they also wanted to grow beyond them.