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SA Election 2009 Special Report
NEWS
ANC holding key NEC meeting
The ANC is holding its quarterly NEC meeting, to discuss the outcome of the elections and how to implement its election manifesto.
FEATURES
Cabinet to tackle Zuma pledges
Analysts say the new Cabinet matches President Jacob Zuma's pledges to smash poverty and boost development, but enormous challenges remain.
MULTIMEDIA
INTERACTIVE
The Democratic Party (DP), now the Democratic Alliance (DA), was formed on 8 April 1989, when the former Progressive Federal Party, Independent Party and National Democratic Movement merged. Under the combined leadership of Zach de Beer, Denis Worrall and Wynand Malan, the DP won 36 seats in Parliament in the general election of September that year. In the first post-apartheid election in 1994, the DP only won 1.7% of the vote at national level. In the 1999 general elections, the DP won over 9% of the national vote. The Democratic Alliance was formed on 24 June 2000, when the then Democratic Party and the New National Party signed an outline agreement to establish the party. This relationship ended in October 2001. In the 2004 general election, the DA gained 12.3% of the vote and 50 seats in the National Assembly.
Source: (www.sahistory.org.za)
Website: www.da.org.za and contributetochange.org
Telephone: 021 465 1431
E-mail: info@da.org.za
Facebook: Democratic Alliance
Twitter: Helen Zille
Physical address: 2nd Floor, Theba Hosken House,
c/o Breda and Mill Streets,
Gardens
Cape Town
Postal address: Democratic Alliance National Head Office,
PO Box 1475,
Cape Town
8000
More stories on DA: News24 Search
1994 Election: 1.73% | 338 426 votes
1999 Election: 9.56% | 1 527 337 votes
2004 Election:12.37% | 1 931 201 votes
ELECTION 2009 INFO
Policies | Manifesto | Press Releases | News24 blog
Parliamentary List |
Premier Candidates
Eastern Cape: Athol Trollip |
PARTY LEADERS
Helen Zille - DA leader and mayor of Cape Town
Helen Zille began her career as a journalist on the Rand Daily Mail and later became a political activist. She became involved in various NGOs and organisations, including the Open Society Foundation, the Independent Media Diversity Trust, and the Black Sash.
She obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Witwatersrand, and joined the former Democratic Party in the mid 1990s, where she was asked to reformulate the party's education policy and stand as a candidate on its election list for the Western Cape legislature. She also acted as technical adviser to the party at Codesa in the early 1990s. Zille was elected to the provincial parliament in the 1999 general election and appointed MEC for education.
She served as MEC under the newly formed Democratic Alliance until 2001, and then as leader of the opposition in the Provincial Legislature until she was elected to national Parliament in 2004.
As a member of Parliament she stood on the Portfolio Committee on Education, and acted as the Democratic Alliance's national spokesperson. In May 2006, Zille was elected mayor of Cape Town, a position she still holds. In 2007, she was elected as leader of the Democratic Alliance.
Joe Seremane: federal chairperson
Joe Seremane has been an advocate of human rights and democracy for as long as he can remember. His first role was that of school teacher in Bekkersdal, until he was barred from that profession for political involvement.
He was also imprisoned on Robben Island from 1963 to 1969, before being "deported" to the then-homeland of Bophuthatswana. He was further detained without trial from 1976-1978, and several times between 1982 and 1984. He has served Civic Organisations in advocacy and later, mediation and conflict resolution, he was the director of justice and reconciliation for the SA Council of Churches, and he has served as a chief Land Claims commissioner.
Recognising the need for a strong opposition party to consolidate democracy in South Africa, he joined the Democratic Party in 1994. He was elected to the National Council of Provinces in 1998, and to the National Assembly in 1999. He was elected federal chairperson of the DP in March 2000, thus becoming the founding chairperson of the Democratic Alliance on its formation.
Sandra Botha: Leader of the opposition in Parliament
Sandra Botha matriculated at Parys Secondary School in the Free State where she was awarded an American Field Service Scholarship which enabled her to go to school in New York for a year. At Stellenbosch University, she obtained her BA degree in economics. It is at Stellenbosch where her political awareness already manifested itself, when she served as a committee member of the Student's Current Affairs Club. She later studied Sesotho through Unisa for two years.
Sandra's home is on the farm in the Free State, while she lives in the Cape when Parliament is sitting. To this day, Sandra is remembered with fondness in Rammulotsi, the local Viljoenskroon township, for establishing a branch of Operation Hunger, by means of which she managed to provide supplementary food to 3 000 people a week till the end of that programme's existence. Her record of non-racial activism also includes being a founding trustee of the famous Ntataise Pre-school Training Facility of Hunter's Vlei farm, where hundreds of disadvantaged farm women were - and still are being - trained as pre-school teachers for participating farms across South Africa.
Her political career includes her appointment as deputy director of the Independent Electoral Commission in the Free State in 1998. After the 1999 election she was selected as the Free State Democratic Party representative to the National Council of Provinces where she was appointed caucus leader from 2000-2004. In 2004, the Free State electoral college of the DA placed Sandra first on the National Assembly list and in the same year she became the first DA MP to be elected as House chairperson of the National Assembly. In May 2007 Sandra was elected as the parliamentary leader for the Democratic Alliance.
Information supplied by the Democratic Alliance
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