Durban — The Patriotic Alliance (PA) is taking its campaign to the highly contested KwaZulu-Natal terrain today as parties accelerate their election campaigns with just less than two weeks to go before the May 29 polls.
Kenny Kunene, the flamboyant and charismatic deputy president of the party, will be at Lenham Primary School in Phoenix on Thursday (today).
The party, formed in 2013 by ex-convict-turned-businessman Gayton McKenzie, has anchored its campaign on the contentious issue of foreign nationals who are in the country illegally.
The party has been calling for the illegal migrants to be ejected from the country and to return to their countries of origin.
The party held an election rally in the Athlone Stadium in Cape Town on Sunday, with party president McKenzie repeating his call for illegal foreign nationals to leave the country.
He also called for the return of the controversial death penalty – which was scrapped by the ANC government in 1994 after the historic first democratic elections.
The PA’s deputy secretary-general, Meshé Habana, confirmed that Kunene and the party’s top brass would be descending on the province.
However, she would not be drawn on which leaders would be accompanying Kunene.
Indications are that KZN, with an 80-member provincial legislature, would be hung with no outright winner.
This means more political players are expected to invade the province in a bid to be part of a coalition government.
While the PA enjoys a relatively sizeable backing in Gauteng, the party has a slim footprint in KZN. Of the just more than 27 million registered voters, 5.7 million are from KZN.
Increasing the stakes is the entrance of the Jacob Zuma-backed uMkhonto weSizwe Party that threatens to hamper the ANC’s firm majority for the first time since 2004.
In that year the ruling party snatched the province from the IFP.
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