News24 | UDM announces Mlimandlela Ndamase as King Sabata Dalindyebo Municipality mayoral candidate

Mlimandlela Ndamase, a former ANC Youth League leader, has been announced as the UDM’s mayoral candidate for the King Sabata Dalindyebo Municipality.

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• Former ANC Youth League leader Mlimandlela Ndamase has joined the UDM and was announced as its mayoral candidate for the King Sabata Dalindyebo Municipality.
• This after UDM leader Bantu Holomisa announced that Ndamase had ditched the ANC for his party.
• Ndamase criticised the ANC’s decline and pledged to combat corruption and factionalism under a UDM-led municipality.
• For more political news, visit News24 Politics.

The UDM has announced Mlimandlela Ndamase, a former ANC Youth League leader and long-time spokesperson of the ANC’s first deputy secretary-general, Nomvula Mokonyane, when she was in government, as its mayoral candidate for the King Sabata Dalindyebo Municipality.

The municipality serves areas such as Mthatha, Coffee Bay and Mqanduli.

This comes weeks after UDM president Bantu Holomisa announced that Ndamase had ditched the ANC for his party. Ndamase was unveiled as the mayoral candidate for the municipality at the Rotary Stadium in Mthatha on Saturday, at an event attended by Holomisa, UDM deputy president Nqabayomzi Nkwankwa, and the party’s national chairperson, Yongama Zigebe.

The party recently announced Nkwankwa, who is also an MP, as its mayoral candidate for the Buffalo City Municipality, and Zigebe as its mayoral candidate for the City of Johannesburg. Zigebe currently serves on the City of Johannesburg council.

The news of Ndamase joining the UDM sent shockwaves through the ANC, especially in the Eastern Cape, where he served in various ANCYL structures. He served as Mokonyane’s spokesperson when she was in government and, most recently, as Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero’s spokesperson.

READ | UDM to name Kwankwa as its mayoral candidate in Buffalo City

In his statement announcing that Ndamase had joined the UDM, Holomisa said his party respected Ndamase’s political history and would not ask him to erase it.

“Experience acquired elsewhere does not disappear when political circumstances change. What matters now is what he brings to the future and how that experience can best serve the UDM and the people of South Africa.

“Prince Ndamase’s experience will contribute to the UDM’s continuing work in areas including service delivery, rural development, municipal governance, strategic communication and rebuilding public confidence in democratic institutions,” he said.

Speaking to News24 after it was announced that he had joined the UDM, Ndamase added that it was irresponsible to “blindly hang on” to the ANC when it was clear that the party was in a serious decline and the centre was not holding.

“One of the things I’ve come to learn is that everyone in the space carries their own baggage, and everyone is not only preoccupied, but everyone is also overwhelmed by what may be subjective interests at times, against a political environment that is very vicious internally.

“So even the little input you may have, and the little issues you may raise, and some of them, you raise them publicly and so on, sometimes they are not processed fully as you would anticipate.

Ndamase said:

And sometimes not that you must always be right, but it’s just that, as I’m saying, I think it’s either there’s too much political distraction, there’s too much political infighting, there’s too much political activity at play that even what may otherwise be obvious is forced to be or to seem unobvious and creates the pain.

He told News24 that he had also read the terrain and that “the ANC is in a bad decline,” but not much was being done to arrest it.

Speaking at his unveiling as the mayoral candidate for the municipality, Ndamase said when the UDM took over, it would “cleanse the system of corruption”.

He announced that under a UDM government, there would be no municipal officials who would serve their own interests or those of political factions instead of serving communities.

Nelson Mandela’s grandson, Mandla Mandela, is also running to become mayor of the municipality in the 4 November local government elections.