Hours after he was announced the ANC’s mayoral candidate for the City of Cape Town, Xolani Sotashe went to church and appealed for prayer.
The ANC Chief Whip for the Dullah Omar region in the Western Cape will be going up against DA mayoral candidate Patricia De Lille in the municipal elections.
With just six weeks to go before the elections on August 3, the ANC this weekend finally announced its mayoral candidates.
African National Congress secretary general Gwede Mantashe made the announcement to reporters in Pretoria shortly before midnight on Saturday.
Mantashe said the ANC was convinced the candidates were “some of the best comrades among our ranks to advance our programme of radical socio-economic transformation”.
Sotashe went to his roots in Lwandle, Strand, yesterday, attending a service at his Presbytarian church with ANC Provincial Executive Committee (PEC) spokesperson Jabu Mfusi in tow.
As the reverend Bongani Gobodo was preaching the word to his congregation, the ANC men smiled and whispered to each other, often checking their phones.
The two shared in the holy communion with about 500 churchgoers before they were given the podium.
Mfusi said they were there to get the blessings of God for Sotashe who is standing as Cape Town mayoral candidate.
He said Sotashe had a proven track record of good service delivery when he was the ANC ward councillor in the Strand area.
When Sotashe took the mic, he said: “We came especially here to this church to get the power of God to assist us to go forward. Before we go out there to campaign, we must make sure that we will be doing a good job of what we were sent to do.”
He thanked the ANC for their faith in his abilities, and promised to take his election campaign “straight to Patricia de Lille’s front door”.
De Lille congratulaed Sotashe on his candidacy but said she was not worried.
“The DA is never complacent but the ANC is not a threat to us, they are a threat to themselves because of their infighting.”