By Zukile Majova
Political Editor
It takes over 600 buses, each carrying 60 passengers, to fill up the 37,000-seater Orlando Stadium in Soweto.
This is the reality of the challenge facing organisers of the Umkhonto Wesizwe party’s manifesto launch on Saturday.
Previously, MK supporters in Johannesburg asked the party to take the manifesto launch to the 100,000-seater FNB Stadium.
Filling up the Calabash – the stadium that hosted the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2010 Fifa Soccer World Cup – would have required over 1,600 bus loads.
The MK party confirmed the presence of the hugely popular musician Papa Penny to help attract the people of Soweto and Johannesburg to its manifesto launch.
Papa Penny resigned as an ANC councillor in Giyani and announced he was joining Zuma’s party.
MK party deputy secretary Arthur Zwane and Gauteng provincial fundraiser Gabisile Shongwe held a blitz campaign at Bree Street Taxi Rank and other parts of the Johannesburg CBD on Wednesday, calling for people to attend their manifesto launch.
On Thursday, Zwane and MK youth league spokesperson Nkateko Mkhabelo also campaigned at Wits University’s main campus.
The party’s youth league has also planned to organise a march from the Hector Pieterson Memorial in Orlando West to the stadium.
On Wednesday, MK’s Moses Mabhida region ward coordinators met to discuss the party’s readiness for the launch. The party is expected to bus thousands of supporters from KZN to help fill the stadium.
On Tuesday, dozens of MK supporters also conducted a door-to-door campaign in Kliptown and Eldorado Park in Johannesburg.
The party said Zuma would present some of the party’s key pillars: including “reclaiming and revitalising the economy, addressing the unemployment crisis, enhancing social justice, and nationalising the Reserve Bank, mines and land distribution”.
Parties like the ANC, the EFF, IFP and recently the Patriotic Alliance have staged public spectacles to fill stadiums and to attract undecided voters.
Pictured above: MK members inspect Orlando Stadium.
Image source: X
