| Intro | South African politician |
| Is | Politician |
| From | South Africa |
| Type | Politics |
| Gender | male |
Grant Haskin (born 1968) is the former Executive Deputy Mayor of Cape Town, where he also served briefly as acting Mayor City of Cape Town, South Africa.
Biography
Early life and education
Grant was born in Camps Bay, a suburb on Cape Towns Atlantic coast. The family moved to Wynberg in Cape Town’s Southern suburbs and he was enrolled at Wynberg Boys Junior School. A few years later, the family moved to Constantia but he continued with his schooling at Wynberg Boys High School, matriculating there in 1986. He spent the next two years doing compulsory national service in the South African Defence Force, based at Youngsfield in Cape Town.
Career
Grant became a member of the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) in late 1998 at the age of 30. He was a volunteer at the party’s provincial office, where he served as a general office assistant, tea maker, photo-copier, toilet cleaner and campaign assistant until the 2 June 1999 National General Elections. A month later, at the party’s provincial annual general conference, he was elected to serve as Provincial Secretary General, a post he was re-elected to until 2005 when he became the Provincial Chairman. In December 2000, he was elected to the City of Cape Town as a councillor via the ACDP’s proportional representation list, where he was also elected as caucus leader of the seven ACDP councillors. As a result of the 2004 National General Elections, Grant was elected to the Western Cape Provincial Parliament as a Member (MPP). In March 2007, the ACDP redeployed him to Councillor in the City of Cape Town to take up the ACDP’s seat on the Mayoral Committee as political head of Amenities and Sport in the City of Cape Town.
After the ‘walk-over window period’ in September 2007 and the protracted negotiation process with the DA on the ACDP’s claim to regain the Executive Deputy Mayors seat, he was elected Executive Deputy Mayor of Cape Town. He served as acting Executive Mayor of Cape Town for a brief period after Mayor Helen Zille was elected Premier-elect of the Western Cape.
His term as Executive Deputy Mayor ended on 27 May 2009 when the Democratic Alliance ended its contractual agreement with the ACDP. The DA also blamed the ACDP for ‘breaches of trust’, but these allegations were refuted. The ACDP ended the governing agreements it had with the DA across the Western Cape Province. During his term as Executive Deputy Mayor of Cape Town, he was political head of the City’s policies and programmes on, inter alia, substance abuse, street people, orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) and international relations.
During the subsequent term as caucus leader for the ACDP, he completed his B.Admin Honours degree in International Relations (Political Science) at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and embarked on writing his full Masters thesis. As a result of the 18 May 2011 Local Government Elections he was re-elected councillor for the City of Cape Town where he remained the Caucus leader. In April 2012 the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) redeployed him to the WC Provincial Parliament as Member until the 2014 National General Elections. In December 2013 he was elected Chair of the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP)’s national Federal Council of Provinces (FCOP) – a post he still holds, and in July 2014 he became the National Elections Manager for the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) for the 2016 local government elections. Following these 2014 elections he returned once more to the City of Cape Town as councillor and caucus leader for the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), a post he held until January 2016 when he resigned to take up a newly created post in the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP): Media and Communications Director.