This week saw a little-remarked on by-election, generally overshadowed by their 99% win in Stellenbosch's 8th ward, and the PA's clear majority in ward 20 in George.

Local by-elections are seldom big news, but even by ordinary standards, the coverage was comically biased, as News24 insisted on covering only the ANC and TRUTH candidates, who together failed to break 2% of the vote, while ignoring the DA and CIP candidates who made up the remaining over-98%. Only the local paper bothered to cover all four.

The DA itself took a very lazy approach to the campaign, sending out the now-infamous standard election spam SMS:

Their candidate, Johann Loots, is just 24, and has only moved into the ward a few months ago, in preparation for the retirement of DA councillor Marian Nieuwoudt at the end of July. Mr. Loots secured the seat with 3,345 votes, while Carla Lourens-Ferreira of the Cape Independence Party trailed with 525 votes, representing 13.5%.

Lourens-Ferreira owns a local security company, and has been accused by local DA supporters of using the CIP as a vehicle to promote her business. Conditions

At the 2021 local elections, the ward achieved a similar result, but with the non-DA remainder split between the VF+ and a host of smaller fragmentary parties. None of those parties weren't running this time, and Jack Miller's CIP scooped the lot.

Newcomers "TRUTH", run by alleged child rapist and Turkish immigrant Mehmet Dag, failed to garner anything significant, and the ANC is almost just there out of ritual activity. Lindiwe Kunene of the ANC managed only 42 votes, or 1%, and Sha-Meemah Mohamed El Bana of the Truth and Solidarity Movement received just three votes, a mere 0.08%.

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Some speculation

Brackenfell's ward 8 is a DA safe seat, and has been for a generation, though their dominance has lost its edge in recent years. In 2011 and 2016 they managed 94% of the vote in that ward, but slipped down to have stabilised around 85% in 2021, when they saw the VF+ (5.6%), ACDP (2.3%), GOOD (2%) and a large raft of petty parties eat away a few of their disgruntled voters.

This forms a bit of a broader pattern - the VF+ made similar gains into the DA's support across the country, both in 2019 and 2021, accounting for just shy of a third of the conservative, mainly Afrikaner party's support. This support was lost in the recent May election, except for the Cape, where the party managed to stabilise support under Dr Corné Mulder's leadership.

What is different between the Cape and national branches at the policy level, is that here (as well as in the Northern Cape), the party had an actual policy for furthering the mandate of their party - self-determination - whereas the northern factions had no such thing.

The weakness of the DA's campaign seems to have had little effect on their overall support in this by-election, but the fact that the remainder of the vote went almost entirely to the CIP suggests that the support the DA regained in national elections has not had as much of an effect on the deepest-DA areas, where a minority of dissatisfied residents have defected from the party more permanently.

Unfortunately, The independence movement is still reeling from the 2024 loss, when supporters showed they were more afraid of the EFF than they were hopeful for secession, and lent their votes to the DA in the hopes of securing a multi-party coalition.

Ignorance of racial voting patterns largely shapes choices like this.

The movement also remains fragmented between three political parties, and the inability to reach consensus on campaign strategy has not helped. But for now, and as long as there are by-elections, there may be some low-hanging fruit for the movement to scoop up.

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