‘Big blue machine on the ground’ — DA looks to topple ANC in 2029

The DA has already spoken to “hundreds of thousands” of voters on the ground as it sets its sights on being the largest party in South Africa’s metros in the 2026 local elections and, ultimately, the country’s biggest party in 2029.

This is according to the DA’s first deputy chairperson Ashor Sarupen, who spoke to Daily Maverick on the sidelines of the party’s electoral congress in Midrand, Gauteng on Saturday.

“The reality is we’ve re-tooled our internal operation and ground war in particular – we have tens of thousands of activists on the ground,” he said.

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Sarupen said the party would deliver a report on Sunday, 12 April, which shows that it has already been speaking to DA voters “at scale” across the country.

“We’ve run this programme called Project Metsu, which is to embed the DA in all sorts of community projects and community issues around the country for the last year, which I’ll present tomorrow in our campaign report. All of these things together is part of the reason why the party is now [starting] to surge in polling,” he said.

The local government election must be held between 2 November 2026 and 31 January 2027.

The ANC beat the DA by almost 19 percentage points in the 2024 national election – 40.18% to 21.81%. Recent polling from the Social Research Foundation (SRF) and Ipsos indicate that the DA is up to between 25% and 28%. The ANC, on the other hand, is down to between 35% and 39%.

Sarupen spoke to Daily Maverick shortly after DA Federal Chairperson, Helen Zille, said in her opening speech that the DA was on track to become the largest party in SA’s metros in the municipal polls.

“And from there, we move to the next milestone: becoming South Africa’s biggest party. Woza 2029, woza!” she said.

‘Micro-targeting DA voters’

If the DA is to become the leading party in South Africa in 2029, it faces a number of challenges, including winning over black voters and reaching rural communities, as it performs strongest in urban metros among minorities, while many black voters still don’t trust it to deliver meaningful economic change.

Before the start of the local elections campaign year, the DA had already registered 70,000 new DA supporters on the voters’ roll, according to Sarupen. With SA’s unregistered voter population standing at about 13 million in 2024, this is a drop in the ocean.

“We’ve been full steam ahead, running a very strong ground war,” he said.

“Historically, the DA has always been known for its slick marketing, its air war and its advertising, but what people don’t know is the big blue machine on the ground that we’ve built up over the past five years,” he said.

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Sarupen said the party has been focusing on a strategy it calls “micro-targeting”.

“There’s a group of South Africans who share our ideas and values and we’ve been focusing on this strategy called micro-targeting to identify who they are in every community,” he said.

Through this strategy, the party is focused on targeting voters across the country – including in townships and rural areas – who share its ideas, regardless of their race, according to Sarupen.

“We’re looking at who they are and targeting them.”

‘Not a one-size-fits-all approach’

One of the party’s young leaders, Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube, who is vying for one of the three deputy federal chairperson positions in the federal executive, believes the party needs to move towards being compassionate.

“If we want to be the largest party in 2029, we’ve got to grow the DA in communities who have never considered voting for the DA before.

“My view is that we have to move away from being just a party of competence to being a party of compassion. Sometimes people are missing that in the DA. People know that where the DA governs, it governs well,” Gwarube said.

But the biggest question is: how can the DA grow in these communities?

“My campaign offer has been quite simple. We need to empower our activists, our councillors, those are our frontline workers, who knock on doors every day, to make sure our message is quite clear, but even in empowering we must make sure it’s not a one-size-fits-all,” she said.

Activists in Mkhanyakude, in rural KwaZulu-Natal, are not going to need the same empowerment as those in Gugulethu, Cape Town. Gwarube believes the DA ought to be intentional about empowering activists and councillors.

“I truly believe when we do that, we will certainly be able to grow the DA,” she said.

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At its congress, where more than 2,500 delegates were in attendance, the DA was unapologetic about its wins since joining the government of national unity, including fighting against an increase in Value Added Tax (VAT) in last year’s budget, and taking the Expropriation Act and NHI to court.

Outgoing DA leader John Steenhuisen said: “Every day, in big ways and small, the DA is winning these battles against destructive policies in ways that were impossible before, because we now have a seat at the table. The results speak for themselves.”

“We obviously still have a very long way to go to rescue South Africa, but for the first time in decades, our country is well and truly moving in the right direction.

“And make no mistake about it: the only reason why any of this is happening, the only reason why we prevented a VAT increase, the only reason why we are fixing broken departments, and the only reason why our economy is showing signs of life is because the DA accomplished our Moonshot mission to enter a national governing coalition,” he said. DM