It's about land, says Anton Alberts as FF+ shows massive gains

With just 40% of the votes counted, the Freedom Front Plus has emerged as one of the smaller parties performing well in the 2019 general election.

In fact, with still 60% of the votes to be counted, the FF+ already has more votes than it garnered in the election five years ago.

PODCAST: VF+ and double votes changing the game

SUBSCRIBE: iono.fm | Pocket Casts | Player.fm | Apple Podcasts

The FF+ celebrated on Thursday afternoon when it hit the 182,000 vote mark, compared with the 165,715 votes it received in 2014. This translated to voter support of just under 3%, up from the 0.9% of 2014.

FF+ chair Anton Alberts said he believed the support was because of the party's stance on land reform.

"You must remember when the ANC talks about changing section 25 of the constitution, it means all property rights," he said.

Alberts said most of the FF+ support came from white voters but they did make inroads in coloured areas.

"People were looking for a champion who would say straight out that we are not going to allow expropriation of land without compensation," he said.

Alberts added that they had seen significant growth in the party and were excited about it. But it is too early to say how many seats the party will have in the national assembly.

"It's still early days to make a total projection in the future as to what we will actually get because many rural area voting districts still have to come in, and our votes come from suburban areas," Alberts said.

In the fifth parliament the party had four seats.