The United Christian Democratic Party is a minor political party in South Africa. It was founded by Lucas Mangope, leader of the Bophuthatswana bantustan in 1997, as a successor to the Tswana National Party, and led by him for the first fifteen years of its existence. Mavis Matladi was elected as its leader on 29 January 2011 after the expulsion of Mangope. Matladi died in December 2011. Isaac Sipho Mfundisi was elected president on Saturday, 7 January 2012.
Most of the party's support comes from the North West province (where the old Bophuthatswana was located), and it has very little presence elsewhere in the country. The UCDP was the official opposition to the African National Congress in the North West province in 1999 and 2004, but slipped to 4th in the provincial legislature in 2009.
At the 2009 elections, the party won 66,086 votes (0.37% of the national total), and 2 seats in Parliament, representing a loss of approximately 50% of its support, and 1 seat, from the preceding elections.
In the provincial elections, their support dropped from 8.49% and 3 seats in the 2004 North West provincial election, to 5,27% and 2 seats in 2009. In 2009, in six of the other provinces, they gained less than 0.1% support.
The party's mission statement stresses the need for Christian values, non-racial democracy, and government inducements for personal self-reliance, while the 2004 manifesto attacked the ANC for, among other things, its alleged softness on crime, nepotism, and neglect of South African infrastructure.
A 2003 survey conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council found that 85% of UCDP voters were female.
Read more about United Christian Democratic Party: Election Results
Famous quotes containing the words democratic party, united, christian, democratic and/or party:
“The Democratic Party is like a mule. It has neither pride of ancestry nor hope of posterity.”
—Ignatius Donnelly (1831–1901)
“In the United States there is more space where nobody is is than where anybody is.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“It will be proved to thy face that thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun and a verb and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“... the black woman can never forget—however lukewarm the party may to-day appear—that it was a Republican president who struck the manacles from her own wrists and gave the possibilities of manhood to her helpless little ones; and to her mind the Democratic Negro is a traitor and a time-server.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)
“The women’s liberation movement at this point in history makes the American Communist Party of the 1930s look like a monolith.”
—Nora Ephron (b. 1941)