Helen Zille said after the May elections that the DA seeks to consolidate its power while the ANC disintegrates, and use its track record in government as a platform to rule the country in the foreseeable future. If good governance alone is sufficient to do this, then they may just succeed.
However, there are a bevy of challenges that render this view moot. Seeing as Cyril Ramaphosa is the president and the ANC is the largest party in the GNU and occupies most of the positions of power, any success will mostly accrue to them. And if the ANC were to be dislodged because of fragmentation, failures (which they can now conveniently blame on other GNU parties) and corruption, they would probably have lost their majority in 2019 already. Perhaps even earlier.
Moreover, neither the DA nor any other party bar the ANC hold the treasury’s purse strings nor a (albeit reduced) plurality of the votes. The ANC may not be getting everything it wants, but it keeps scoring victories – whether symbolic or not.
For example, Ramaphosa recently signed the Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Bill into law. Despite the bill’s critics hailing the omission of the clauses pertaining to language and admission as a coup, he nevertheless signed it and permitted another three months for further discussion on these controversial clauses. He has already scored a legislative victory on matters as wide-ranging as new requirements for homeschooling to making Grade R compulsory to rubberstamping the proscription of corporal punishment. If the nebulous “sufficient consensus” requirement is not reached within three months, the entire bill will be implemented.
Protracted court cases are sure to follow, but this will portray the DA (who is heavily dependent on Afrikaners for its support) as a party obsessed with (largely white) language rights as opposed to (largely black) access to better schooling. While the party’s Siviwe Gwarube, as minister of basic education, will want to build more schools and appoint more teachers, she is now saddled with the BELA quandary and a dwindling budget for her department. She could eventually simply incur all the blame from diverse constituencies for failing the BELA test and not equipping keeping more schools with better resources.
After some horse-trading and help from Action SA, the City of Johannesburg yet again has an ANC mayor in Dada Morero – two years after the Johannesburg High Court ruled that his election was unconstitutional and invalid. In Tshwane, Cilliers Brink was removed by an ANC-sponsored motion of no confidence. At the time of writing, it isn’t all too clear what might happen next in the capital, but the ANC will once again be on the winning side in a coalition. They still control all of Gauteng’s metros in some way and Gauteng premier Panyasa Lesufi has snubbed the DA in forming his government of provincial unity in the province.
Yet, the GNU doesn’t seem to be in any danger. The DA’s predicament is that it cannot willy-nilly leave this ANC-dominated coalition, regardless of what happens at other levels of government or even nationally. Most black political parties loathe the biggest opposition party (the feeling probably mutual) and this presents serious challenges for forming coalitions. The DA has thus been forced into a Faustian pact with Ramaphosa’s ANC lest it seeks to forfeit its share of governmental power. Outside of the Western Cape, it continues to be hamstrung by the same vote-share trap in the face of the ANC’s supposed decline.
In rural provinces such as the North West, Limpopo and Mpumalanga, the ANC still reigns supreme while the EFF and Jacob Zuma’s MK party variously complete the podium positions. MK is the biggest party in KwaZulu-Natal. In Tshwane, as in Johannesburg and Gauteng, the DA still lacks the necessary support to govern outright or even as the lynchpin of a stable coalition.
The DA must realise that it cannot merely rely on minorities’ (especially white) support to govern in Gauteng – let alone other provinces and their municipalities. Many people are furious at Herman Mashaba and Action SA for opening Tshwane’s door to the ANC and EFF, and now believe that Action SA will get punished for it in 2026. It is their right to be irate, but to think Action SA will get vanquished on account of this is quixotic. Mashaba currently commands solid support in places such as Hammanskraal that the DA simply don’t. He brought something new to the scuppered coalition and initially rendered it feasible with almost 10% of the votes in 2021. As a possible mayor, he could do even more to appeal to his base despite his collaboration with the ANC. He also has the Johannesburg arrangement as an insurance policy against ANC machinations in Tshwane. Two years is a long time in politics. Even if Mashaba falls on his own sword in Tshwane, it is doubtful that his voters will automatically or even easily flow to the DA or parties (other than the ANC) with which it could conceivably form another viable coalition.
If the DA does not broaden its appeal, the same challenges will continue to beset the party. Good and clean governance in certain places is simply not enough. Most voters in the country will never see their progress in the Western Cape, and Cape Town in particular, and realise what could be. They need to embed themselves in communities around the country. They still need to prove themselves to the black electorate while fending off centre-right challenges from the Freedom Front Plus. Local tensions between the FF+ and DA have led to Western Cape coalitions recently being dissolved and more are in peril of being poleaxed. Even in these fights, the ANC is often eagerly waiting in the wings to strike a deal. A long-term strategy is useful, but the ruling party is showing that simple extrapolation is dangerous and that power and tactics – however Machiavellian they may be – are the elements that invariably carry the day.
Dr Brink is an entrepreneur, business consultant and analyst from the Cape Winelands.
