The Independent Democrats (ID) was a South African political party, formed by former

Pan Africanist Congress The Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, often shortened to the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), is a South African pan-Africanist national liberation movement that is now a political party. It was founded by an Africanist group, led by Robert So ...

member

Patricia de Lille Patricia de Lille (née Lindt; born 17 February 1951) is a South African politician who is the current Minister of Tourism and leader of the political party Good. She served as Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure from 2019 to 2023. S ...

in 2003 via floor crossing legislation. The party's platform was premised on opposition to corruption, with a mixture of liberal principles and strategies for improving equity. The party's strongholds were the Northern and Western Cape. On 15 August 2010, the party announced plans to merge with the larger Democratic Alliance as part of a plan to challenge the governing

African National Congress The African National Congress (ANC) is a political party in South Africa. It originated as a liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid and has governed the country since 1994, when the 1994 South African general election, fir ...

(ANC). The party disbanded as a separate political organization in 2014.

2009 election manifesto

Ahead of the national

elections An election is a formal group decision-making process whereby a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operated ...

2009 2009 was designated as the International Year of Astronomy by the United Nations to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei's first known astronomical studies with a telescope and the publication of Astronomia Nova by Joha ...

, the ID launched a manifesto promising that, if elected to power, they would increase the staffing of the South African Police Service to 200,000, enlist 5,000 caseworkers to operate in crime-stricken communities, make South Africa a leader in

renewable energy Renewable energy (also called green energy) is energy made from renewable resource, renewable natural resources that are replenished on a human lifetime, human timescale. The most widely used renewable energy types are solar energy, wind pow ...

and finance a minimum social grant by taxing

luxury goods In economics, a luxury good (or upmarket good) is a good (economics), good for which demand (economics), demand increases more than what is proportional as income rises, so that expenditures on the good become a more significant proportion of ove ...

, tobacco and alcohol. In addition they vowed that an "ID government would fire a minister whose department received a qualified audit two years in a row."

Merger with DA

In 2010, then-ID leader Patricia de Lille formalized an agreement to merge with the Democratic Alliance. The two parties merged by 2014. Due to this, the ID did not contest the 2011 local elections as a separate entity, instead fielding its candidates on the DA's ballots. In February 2012, the-then Leader of the Official Opposition, Lindiwe Mazibuko, reshuffled her shadow cabinet, which included appointing members of the ID to shadow portfolios for the first time. This was seen as a move towards strengthening the co-operation between the two parties heading towards the completion of the merger.

Election results

National elections

Municipal elections

References

;General * Hartley, Aziz. "ID releases election manifesto." ''

Cape Times The ''Cape Times'' is an English-language morning newspaper owned by Sekunjalo Investments, Independent News & Media SA and published in Cape Town, South Africa. the newspaper had a daily readership of 261000 and a circulation of 34523. By th ...

'', 2 February 2009 in literature: 4.

External links

Independent Democrats
(official site) {{Political history of South Africa Democratic Alliance (South Africa) Liberal parties in South Africa Defunct liberal political parties Defunct political parties in South Africa Political parties established in 2003 Political parties disestablished in 2014 Political parties in South Africa created by floor crossing 2003 establishments in South Africa 2014 disestablishments in South Africa