Evita to launch new political party
– Deon de Lange, IOL News, 11 October 2008
Evita Bezuidenhout — that seemingly indestructible political legend — is set to beat former defence minister and ANC chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota to the punch by registering the country's newest political party next week.
Evita's People's Party (EPP) will be launched at a venue to be announced "to fill the empty space left by infighting in the ruling ANC", her publicist said this week.
Bezuidenhout said in a statement on Thursday that the major focus of her party would be "on the importance of voting in the next election, on solving the problems of service delivery to people who have been waiting since 1994 … and not on who in the ANC is important".
The EPP also plans to home in on the need for changes to health, education, housing and transport policies.
"My question to the ANC is: if you have a collective leadership and proportional representation, surely individuals don't count? Therefore, the EPP will have me as the leader and there will be no lists," Bezuidenhout explained.
She said it was all very well that Lekota had served his party with "divorce papers", but questioned what this had to do with a "subsiding economy, rising crime and violence, official corruption and political confusion".
"No political party inherits power as a right. They have to work for it and be expected to answer to the people."
She suggested the country was sick and tired of lists and wanted instead to be represented by politicians elected directly in a free and fair election by the people of South Africa.
"(The country's leadership should not be determined) by an un-
She urged South Africans to use their vote in the 2009 national and provincial elections to "protect our democracy — it's the only one we've got".
Bezuidenhout made a special appeal to "people from all political persuasions" who were "committed to the protection of the Constitution, the enrichment of our youth and the celebration of our diversity" to vote for the EPP in the next election.
"Let the people lead and the government can follow — and Archbishop Desmond Tutu will now have a party to vote for," she concluded cheekily.
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