Build One South Africa (BOSA) leader Mmusi Maimane told Polity that his party is aiming to be amongst the top four political parties in the country in this year’s crucial May 29 elections.

BOSA will contest South Africa’s national elections with 400 candidate representatives of communities and constituencies across the country.

“We are feeling strong, you know. When we set out we wanted to get above 5%. We think it’s still possible, we want to grow. We want to be in the top four parties in the country, and we are working towards saying ‘put us in the room’ [of a coalition] because what we know is there will be no party that has an absolute majority,” said Maimane.

Polls predict that the African National Congress (ANC) will not win an outright majority, with Maimane predicting that parties will have to form a “grand” opposition coalition.

He told Polity that in choosing coalition partners he was selective about what the party had to offer, stressing that the ANC was definitely excluded from coalition discussions.

He said he could speak to any other parties, in general, and work with how the plan to govern could be achieved.

“I am careful not to be selective about ‘who’, I can rather be selective about ‘what’. This is where I am very central because we have a ten-point plan. The plan touches on areas such as making sure Eskom actually works, we talk about logistics, we talk about educating our kids, we talk about building infrastructure,” he said.

He called on South Africans to put BOSA in a room for a “grand coalition”.

“…the ask is that at a basic minimum, put us in a room so that we can decide to work with those who share the same vision of South Africa for all, who actually want for us to be able to deliver a job in every home, so that we can build a capable government that sets up South Africa’s future,” he said.

He said other parties would not be able to match BOSA’s ten-point plan.

“…if a party brings the corrupt to Parliament, you cannot work with them. And I am afraid that includes the ANC, they are bringing corrupt people to Parliament. On the other score when you say you want to Build One South Africa you cannot work with parties that want to hold on to racism, because parties want to say we only want to represent this race, this tribe,” he said.

He noted that the worst thing that parties could do was to create the grand coalition of the opposition and govern worse than the ANC.

“South Africans will never forgive us for that. We have to govern better and deliver better,” he said.

Maimane said he was sad about what was happening to the ANC, however, he said it would be good for the ANC to renew itself from the opposition benches.

ELECTION MANIFESTO

Maimane said BOSA’s manifesto talked about keeping communities safe, by devolving policing so that intelligence was on the ground. He said with this, the party would be able to identify criminals and work with the criminal justice system to lock perpetrators away.

He added that BOSA would also look at building the capability of the State by appointing ethical leaders.

He noted the election polls, saying if they were to be believed, BOSA, from a favourability point of view, sat in the top four or five leaders in the country, and as a party, it was starting to show growth in provinces such as the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.