While others dither and delay, the DA is on track for October elections

3 May 2021

The DA is on track to contest the 2021 Local Government Elections in October this year. We’ve been working hard to be in a position to wage our election campaign in these unusual circumstances we still find ourselves in and, come 27 October, every voter in South Africa will know what the DA stands for and what we offer them in local government.

This is the message I relayed to South Africans in a video broadcast today, and it is the message the DA will send out loud and clear on the 22nd of May when we hold an historic virtual rally to kick off our campaign.

While senior ANC members like Finance Minister Tito Mboweni are putting out messages on social media asking for the elections to be postponed, and the EFF are still dithering about their readiness to contest the elections, the DA has none of these issues. We are neither distracted nor confused. We know the only way to effect real change in South Africa is through the power of the vote, and that is why we are marching forward towards 27 October.

On 22 May we will hold the biggest virtual rally this country has ever experienced. As we demonstrated when we held our party’s last elective congress as well as our policy conference in September and October of last year, the DA is the only party to have stepped seamlessly into this virtual age necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic. In three weeks’ time we will showcase this innovation once more.

Everyone knows South Africa is desperate for change. Even before the Covid pandemic hit, our economy was in crisis. We had record unemployment numbers, our credit rating was junk status and our economy was in recession. Government’s heavy-handed and often senseless response to the pandemic slammed several further nails into the coffin of our shattered economy. To dig our way out of this hole will require the kind of sweeping change that the ANC government simply isn't capable of.

As has been vividly demonstrated by the revelations at the Zondo Commission, the ruling party is rotten through. The President’s testimony at the Commission simply underlined not only the rot in his party, but also their inability to even start reining it in. More than three years into his administration, there is no sign of government corruption letting up, and no one has yet been held accountable for any of the decades-long looting, despite an almost comical litany of promises these past three years by the President himself to tackle corruption. This is why the change will have to come from outside the ANC.

South Africans who want to affirm their commitment to bringing change to our country are invited and encouraged to go to time4change.org.za and sign our pledge.

Here they will be able to signal their readiness to roll up their sleeves and help build our country into a South Africa that works for all and not just some, a South Africa that’s not divided up into small homogeneous communities and parties only looking out for only their own interests, a South Africa that is safe and economically prosperous, where every citizen can build a meaningful life and provide for their family.

Our only hope for a better future is a united country. Those who still try to divide us and turn us against each other don’t have South Africa’s best interest at heart. Those who campaign for a retreat back into little corners of racial and cultural solidarity are taking our democratic project backwards. When the DA speaks of change, we mean change that benefits every single South African and every single community.

Issued by John Steenhuisen, Leader of the Democratic Alliance, 3 May 2021