Africa Muslim Party

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AMP election symbol

The Africa Muslim Party is a South African Muslim political party. It was founded in 1994, with Gulam Sabdia as Chairman and Imtiaz Suleman as national leader, and competed in the 1994 elections with few (around 78,000) votes to account for (it had put up 60 candidates for the National Assembly and 25 for the Council of Provinces). It competed in the 1999 elections, but only in Western Cape province, achieving 9,513 votes from the single province; the next year, the AMP competed in elections for Cape Town metropolitan area and received 2 seats in the local legislature. After sitting out of the 2004 elections, the AMP competed again for the Cape Town Metro council in 2006, gaining 3 seats. It currently forms part of the multi-party coalition (alongside the Independent Democrats and Democratic Alliance) which supports the current mayoral government of the DA's Helen Zille.

[edit] Controversy

The AMP has been attracting unwanted controversy in recent years, which peaked most recently in the 2006 elections, in which a pamphlet which derided the Democratic Alliance's national leader Tony Leon and his wife Michal as "supporters of the racist and murderous Israeli government" was being circulated through Tafelsig, Mitchells Plain. The pamphlet was reproduced on AMP's official stationery, but Wasfie Hassiem, the present national leader, flatly denied any ties between the AMP and the pamphlet, alleging that the AMP was being defrauded. The matter has been referred to the Independent Electoral Commission and Cape Town police.