Former businessman Roger Jardine has started a new party to contest the elections. Picture: Timothy Bernard/Independent Newspapers
Former businessperson Roger Jardine has picked a range of leaders who are starting a party that is set to contest the elections next year.
This is considered the most hotly contested elections since 1994, where the ANC’s control of the state is under threat for the first time in almost three decades.
Jardine’s Change Starts Now movement has roped in former ANC veteran Murphy Morobe as campaign director.
Activist Mark Heywood has also joined Change Stars Now as political strategy principal.
Dr Aslam Dasoo, an activist and former trade unionist, is heading the political desk of the movement.
Former executive director of the Helen Suzman Foundation Nicole Fritz has teamed up with Jardine’s movement as lead political counsel.
Both Morobe and Jardine said over the weekend the movement will bring about change that is needed in South Africa after the ruling party has ruined the state.
They said they will be meeting with various interested parties and civil society organisations to build a movement that will bring change.
Morobe said people were dejected and have lost hope.
Jardine said this was not the time for South Africans to watch idly while the country is on fire.
They need all the support they can get to push the ANC below 50%.
Dasoo, who was speaking at the launch of the movement, denied they were trying to hijack the United Democratic Front (UDF) brand.
“I don’t know where that comes from. I am of the UDF, not a great leader in it, but an intense activist. There are others like Murphy Morobe, a great leader of the UDF and never for a moment either among ourselves or with anyone else, including the person who made that claim, did we ever intimate that that is what we want to do. In fact, we said quite the opposite. We are quite surprised,” said Dasoo.
He described the launch of Change Starts Now as an important milestone for South Africa.
He said South Africa was ready for a new party and for a new society. This was the beginning of a new journey.
siyabonga.mkhwanazi@inl.co.za
Politics