Neville Delport, the former ANC Western Cape provincial secretary, announced his resignation from the party on Wednesday, 5 November. He will join the Democratic Alliance, along with two West Coast ANC ward councillors. (Photo: Suné Payne) 
“We are no longer ANC members,” said veteran Western Cape politician Neville Delport, as he dumped the African National Congress (ANC) for its political rival, the Democratic Alliance (DA) on Wednesday, 5 November.
With an eye on the local government elections, to be held between November 2026 and January 2027, DA federal council chair Helen Zille said more defections were expected soon.
/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/sune-DA-announcement-1-.jpg "On Wednesday, 5 November, a media briefing in Cape Town addressed by DA federal council chair Helen Zille (second from left) and DA Western Cape leader Tertuis Simmers (third from left) announced that senior African National Congress leaders from the West Coast region had defected to the Democratic Alliance. (Photo: Suné Payne)")
Zille and DA Western Cape leader Tertuis Simmers announced the defection of Delport, the former ANC provincial secretary, and other key ANC leaders in the West Coast region: Daniel Baadjies (a Langeberg municipality ward councillor), Paul Strauss (a Cederberg municipality ward councillor), and Jason Donn (an ANC regional executive member).
/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/sune-DA-announcement-3.jpg "Former ANC Western Cape provincial secretary Neville Delport led a group from the party’s West Coast region as they announced their defection to the Democratic Alliance. (Photo: Suné Payne)")
At the time of the briefing, the ward councillors had yet to send their resignation letters to their respective councils or, in the case of Delport, to ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula.
The councillors’ resignations will trigger two by-elections – in Langeberg and Cederberg municipalities. It is likely the candidates would stand for the same wards again, but this time with the DA.
Who are the defectors?
On 15 October, Baadjies won his ward seat in Langeberg under the ANC banner, gaining 47.43% of the votes. Interestingly enough, as Wayne Sussman reported, Baadjies was the Freedom Front Plus’s candidate for the ward in the 2021 municipal elections.
Delport is a well-known organiser from the West Coast region and has built a reputation for organising within the rural areas. However, he has also built a reputation for factionalism within party structures, as Daily Maverick reported in July 2024, after a stalemate emerged when it came to the filling of a vacancy in the Cape Town council.
More recently, Delport was listed as number 23 on the ANC’s list of additional members in its Provincial Task Team, which came into effect after the provincial executive was disbanded at the end of October.
Speaking at the briefing in Cape Town, Delport outlined several reasons for his defection, including the sidelining of “coloured” representation within the newly formed Provincial Task Team and factionalism within the task team.
According to Delport, his decision to leave the ANC was taken months ago after a tightly contested by-election in Matzikama (which featured an ANC candidate who had defected from the DA), which the DA eventually won. His options were to join either the rival Patriotic Alliance or the DA.
He claimed he saw how the DA operated, with “values and integrity compared to other political parties”, during the by-election. Delport said the DA was by far “the cleanest in terms of how they operate in terms of by-elections”.
For now, the DA has assigned Delport to mobilise support for the party as well as prepare for the upcoming municipal elections.
Voting patterns in the Western Cape have shown a decline in support for the ANC in successive elections. In the 2021 municipal elections, the party won only 20.3% of the votes across the province in total. By comparison, the party won 26.22% of the votes in the 2016 municipal elections.
Within the Cape metro, the party went from 24.36% in 2016 to only 18.6% in 2021.
After the 2021 municipal elections, the Western Cape had 16 hung councils out of the total of 30, and the upcoming elections promise to be tightly fought.
DA’s road to elections a ‘clear path’
At the briefing, Simmers said the path to the 2026 municipal elections was “clear”. He said data from within the party showed the DA was on course for a “historic moment”.
DA activists should take the party’s “message of good governance to each and every community”, he said.
“So we will march, disciplined, focused, but based on values and principles, and we will come out a stronger party,” said Simmers.
However, Delport and co’s defection was not welcomed in all quarters. A statement by ANC national spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu said the party was neither “surprised nor shaken” by Delport’s departure.
“His exit affirms the correctness and necessity of the ongoing reconfiguration process, which seeks to restore the ANC’s integrity, discipline and ideological clarity,” read the statement.
“We have always been aware of his regressive and narrow ideological posture, which sought to divide our people on the basis of apartheid classification.
“His departure is a confirmation that those who hold these kinds of tendencies in the movement will not survive an ANC that is renewed. The renewal of our movement is a deliberate act to cleanse it of opportunism, self-interest, and political convenience,” the statement said.
Elections analyst Wayne Sussman told Daily Maverick that there had been a period when Delport led the ANC to victory, particularly in by-elections before 2024, on both the West Coast and in rural areas, but after its disastrous 2024 showing, the ANC, including Delport, had not recovered.
“So if he can regain that form he showed before the 2024 elections and really, the ANC is quite strong in the West Coast and in rural areas, then he will be a net benefit for the DA,” said Sussman.
“I think Neville Delport is probably unhappy about the reconfiguring of the provincial leadership and lost faith in the ANC,” said Sussman, “so this is a victory for the DA”.
The ANC defections come months after the party’s City of Cape Town caucus leader, councillor Banele Majingo, resigned and joined the DA, minutes before he was due to table a motion of no confidence against council speaker, the DA’s Felicity Purchase. DM