happened on the name earlier in the year and my judgement veers to the negative side. I judge it as somewhere between one of the “we queue for you” type services and one of the many, many, many “someone else and his dog started a church/political party type gig”.
Their model seems to be one of telling people they will help them fight the monster under the bed but also make sure to continuously remind people that every single sound or shadow is a possible sign of the monster under the bed. At least their “survey” info and comments do seem to get submitted to for instance parliamentary groups but it appears that is where it stops.
Like most political orientated movements/organisations there is are currently actually two competing sides (for monthly contributions to help fund the monster under the bed?) and three different web urls - since the original grouping had a somewhat public falling out - maybe their position will be that the project forked…?. At least one involved member (of the current .co.za version) is openly aligned with a political party and was on their 2019 election list.
Apparently the DMRE actually used some of their (dear SA’s) survey “data” to justify not upping the 50MW license expemtion for generation in 2021. Survey data can be somewhat of a mine field - internet based survey data turns public participation into season 1 of “Idols SA”.
As with anything mostly social media based, I am very reluctant to take anything by and related to them (all the different versions) at face value.
I think middle class politics, like many things, seem to be a matter of convenience - if people could register their dissatisfaction with local council while at the point of sale at woolies, they would generally opt for that (at KFC…"would you like to add "vote no for tariff increases to your meal?.. or just click here, submit a comment and we will take care of it for you…).
We do not need more political groups - we need the ones that exist to do better. If current councillors/representatives are not willing/able to satisfactorily get the message across then local residents should probably communicate this to their various existing political parties in the form of “we will vote with our wallets/votes”. It obviously becomes a problem when your chosen party is actually in favour of the rates increase… It is easy to be opposed to the increase until someone asks for a viable way to run the council without such an increase (this is also where I believe people will diverge - “I will not pay/subsidise for squatters to receive services” vs “the increase is okay in principle but the amount is just too much”).