Durban — African Democratic Change (ADeC) has become the first party to announce that it will form a coalition with former president Jacob Zuma-backed Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) party.
ADeC leader Visvin Reddy had a long meeting with Zuma at his Nkandla homestead which started on Tuesday evening and lasted until 3am on Wednesday morning. Although some of the discussion was confidential, Reddy has confirmed to the Daily News that his party would work with the MK party after this year’s general elections.
Speaking to the paper on Wednesday morning, Reddy said his party was one of the like-minded parties that Zuma and the MK had met in discussing strategies on how to rescue the country from the ANC failures, adding that he had come to realise that small parties have no role in shaping national politics and therefore it was important to consider voting with like-minded parties in order to make a meaningful impact rather than barking alone in the opposition benches with no one to take you seriously because “you are just small fish in the big pond’’.
“We discussed various pertinent issues with Zuma and it is true that my party would form a coalition government with MK as I believe that MK will garner enough votes to lead the government after elections,” said Reddy.
Reddy, who is also a vocal councillor in eThekwini, is a veteran politician. After being with the Minority Front for many years, he left and joined the DA in 2004, but he spent less than a month there and jumped to the ANC. Citing his reasons for dumping the DA and joining the ANC, he said the DA was hell-bent on reverting the country back to the yesteryears of apartheid. In 2014, he ruffled feathers with the ANC after his Facebook post which the ANC called divisive and subsequently left the party. In 2020, he was among the people who founded ADeC and contested the 2021 local government elections, which earned him a seat in eThekwini.
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