The ANC warned the people of Khayelitsha yesterday to watch out for DA mayoral candidate Patricia de Lille and her party, saying the DA's main concern was the elite and the rich.

ANC national chairman Baleka Mbete went on the election trail in the Cape Flats township and addressed crowds of supporters there.

"If you don't vote for the ANC, you are going to allow the DA to continue with its elite and biased programmes," she said.

"De Lille will come - she is always on the move. From the PAC to the ID and now the DA."

Mbete told The Times the DA was always boasting that Cape Town was the best-run city in South Africa, but she believed this was not the case.

"I have just come from the TR section here in Khayelitsha. I've been recently, in the past year and a half, in Masiphumelele. It is disgusting - the living conditions of our people.

"This old lady who was taking me around TR section says to me that when [Western Cape Premier Helen Zille] comes to their area she ends up on the road. She never walks inside the actual squatter area. Just walk around and see what is happening there," said Mbete.

Zille was meanwhile at an election rally in Promosa, Potchefstroom yesterday. She spoke, among other things, about housing.

"I hear that some people are jumping the queue and there has been corruption," she said.

"When the DA took over the City of Cape Town in 2006, we inherited a housing waiting list of 334000 people. The allocation of houses had become notorious for bribery and corruption. People were known to jump the queue. Some people were prioritised over others. Some people lied about their income so they could qualify for a free house. It was a mess."

But in the past five years the DA had worked to make housing allocation "fairer", Zille said.

Mbete said people from Grabouw and Khayelitsha did not want the blue DA T-shirts issued widely recently.

"There is a huge demand for ANC T-shirts . I had to go and get T-shirts from headquarters and send them here. They are sick of the blue."

Mbete focused heavily on factions in the ANC. Last week, ANC offices in Cape Town were when an angry group of supporters stormed the building, unhappy about the party's election lists.

Asked whether she believed the divisions in the Western Cape were weakening the ANC, Mbete said: "I think a weak ANC is part of our past. I don't think what happened recently is an indication that there is a major wave that is going to result in further weakness. No.

"If anything, I think we emerge from here even stronger going forward," she said.