Rustenburg - Mbahare Kekana was elected as the president of Forum 4 Service Delivery (F4SD) unopposed at the party's second elective conference in Mpumalanga.
Only the position of the general secretary was contested, Masego Kodisang from North West retained her position, she was contesting with Jacob Manganyi from Limpopo.
In his address, Kekana said his mandate was to win seats for the party at the national Parliament in 2024.
“We will be launching what we call 4000 branches campaign, we are targeting 4000 branches and I can tell you today, if we win those branches we are lucky, we are saying coming national election if we can get a minimum of 200 votes in each branch. If you can have 800 000 you qualify for 20 seats in Parliament ... Wherever you are launch a branch,” he said to a chorus of applause from conference delegates.
He said F4SD was not a North West based but a national party.
“We are a national party, not a North West, Mpumalanga or Gauteng party, as and when we have events we will rotate them in all provinces ...This is not a regional party, we are building a national party. North West is not alpha and omega of this organisation. We must be treated equally,” he said.
This was after concerns were raised that the party should have had its elective conference in North West where it was formed instead taking the conference to Mpumalanga.
Forum 4 Service Delivery was founded in 2015 in North West, it won its first ever municipal ward in Taung, North West in the 2021 municipal election and have a number of Municipal Public Accounts Committee (MPAC) chairs in several municipalities.
Kekana himself is MPAC chairperson in the Ngaka Modiri Molema District Municipality in North West.
The party has also established a student wing, which was expected to contest for Student Representative Council (SRC) election at the Lehurutshe campus of Taletso Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) College near Zeerust in North West.
IOL