The Democratic Alliance (DA) has taken a couple of body blows in recent weeks. The party seems to be coping with allegations of corruption/misuse of funds against its leader, John Steenhuisen, and suggestions of things untoward around the firing of Environment Minister Dion George. As the summer days of December head towards that annual shutdown, South Africa’s own Ferragosto, we may know how these issues affect the DA.
Evidence of electoral gains over the past 10-15 years suggests that the DA may be unaffected by these body blows. Unless DA Federal Council Chairperson Helen Zille decides otherwise, that is; a lot like Julius Malema, Zille seems to have the final say on all things DA. Cathedra mea, regulae meae. Collectively, the liberals have been the most consistent and somewhat stable political formation in South Africa over the past decade or so.
They have managed internal instability and stayed on message, and when viewed together, these have given the DA a form of legitimacy, and projected an impression of stability and continuity. To be clear, stability, continuity and consistency means just that; it has been (relatively) stable and consistent, and it has been continuous. None of this means that it has been good or bad. It just means that its rivals have been marked by instability and inconsistency.
If you traced the DA’s gains on vertical and horizontal axes, you may see that the loss of leaders and prominent figures, some more credible than others (Lindiwe Mazibuko, Mbali Ntuli, Phumzile van Damme, Mmusi Maimane and Ghaleb Cachalia), failed to change the growth and appeal of liberals among the electorate. The DA’s electoral results grew from about 12.4% in 2004 to around 21.8% in 2024. The party was apparently unaffected by the departure of prominent political leaders.
The message from the DA seems to be: be like us or leave the party. This brings a kind of internal coherence and stability. You may, of course, say that that is authoritarian and inflexible, or that is “high discipline” and “standing by your principles”. The electorate, the majority of which, in this case, has been the white minority, have stood by the DA, with window seats offered to black people — if they don’t misbehave, as did Mazibuko, Ntuli, Van Damme, Maimane and Cachalia.
Instability and incoherence on the way down
The DA’s main challenger (or is it the other way around?), the ANC, has been on a downward slope over the past two decades. The ANC fell from a high of 69.7% in 2004 to 40% in 2024. The departure or disappearance of leaders (take a pick from the late Tito Mboweni and Pravin Gordhan, Trevor Manuel, Mcebisi Jonas, Kgalema Motlanthe, Jacob Zuma, Julius Malema and Floyd Shivambu) has made no difference.
The EFF set out in a pubescent hurricane of hormonal hysteria in 2013, and within a decade lost its vigour and vim. Put more politely; the EFF prepared for and set off on a 100m sprint, but South African politics is about preparing for and setting off on an ultra-marathon. The electoral results reflect the EFF’s decline.
The departure and disappearance from view of Shivambu, Mzwanele Manyi, Busisiwe Mkhwebane, Dali Mpofu and Mbuyiseni Ndlozi (among others) has done little to suggest any kind of organisational stability in the EFF. The only consistency in the party has been in the person of its leader, Malema, and the its loyalty to its seven cardinal pillars. Like Zille in the DA, Malema seems to have the final say in all things EFF. Cathedra mea, regulae meae. You can call it stubbornness, or “high discipline”, but tracing the EFF on those X and Y axes makes it clear that it has been losing the electorate. The hope that the EFF offered in 2013 turned into an illusion within a decade.
The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) has declined in membership and electorally after the death of Mangosuthu Buthelezi left a vacuum at the head of the party. The IFP has remained relatively stable internally and is still somewhat of a force in KwaZulu-Natal. While the ANC has always been Inkatha’s biggest rival in that province, the Zuma family’s uMkhonto Wesizwe party has replaced the old liberation movement as the provincial challenger. The IFP, like the ANC and EFF, is also not the electoral force it once was.
The MK party may yet become a national force, but we should wait and see. One immediate problem with MK is that it suffers from the same affliction as the Pan Africanist Congress of 1959; Azapo in 1978; the Congress of the People in 2008, and the EFF in 2013. They were all born out of opposition to the ANC.
The record shows that this opposition to the ANC has not resulted in expansion, stability, coherence and electoral gains. All of the above results have been reported, but it’s worth restating: the PAC, Azapo and Cope have barely affected South Africans’ lives, and the electorate has not been kind to them. The IFP still balances a load on its head, but the load is smaller now, and the party’s passage is blocked by the ANC and MK.
Last week’s resignation of Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla may change things for MK and the IFP in KZN, but she is a political neophyte. Shivambu’s departure earlier this year seems to have had no effect on MK, but it’s too soon to tell. Shivambu carries a bit more weight than Zuma-Sambudla. Unless that firecracker dries out, it will not spark.
Increased electoral support
What does seem clear is that while the ANC, EFF, PAC, IFP, Azapo and Cope are in various stages of decline and irrelevance, the DA has enjoyed increased electoral support — it has been bolstered by a free hit with the Government of National Unity, and seem to ride every little storm within its ranks. In this sense, the DA is the most stable and consistent political formation in South Africa, and is on its way up. Other parties have become more incoherent and unstable.
There are two probable reasons for the DA’s rise and stability. One is that it has benefitted significantly from an intellectual infrastructure (public intellectuals, think tanks/institutions) that has helped rally and organise loyalists, fellow travellers, vested interests, supporters and voters without affecting the property structure. In the notorious liberal fashion, the DA awards people the right to protest and express themselves, but not to change the property structure.
No other political party (among the top five) enjoys the privilege of the intellectual infrastructure that the DA has. That is a conversation for another time and place. Another reason for the DA’s gains is that the ANC, the most important challenge to the liberals, has too many centres of power, a loss of credible political leaders and a record of prebendalism, which necessarily means that if you are not in the inner circle the fruits of the prebend do not reach you.
The ANC has, also, squandered (within a generation) the moral gains and standing it had enjoyed since Nelson Mandela, and the economic gains of former president Thabo Mbeki. My take on that latter era is that you cannot speak of growth without speaking about distribution, and that macroeconomic stability (and even low inflation) is not an end in itself. That, too, is for another discussion.
For all the above reasons, and if we follow the evidence of its electoral gains, never mind the losses of political leaders (Mazibuko, Ntuli, Maimane etc), we may see the DA gaining new members. Unless other political parties stabilise, and their leaders start singing from the same hymn sheet, the DA could become more appealing to the electorate.
Financial support
It already has the financial support that is part of the intellectual infrastructure referred to above. This may or may not have been reported on, but the countries that supported the ANC during the apartheid era had mostly turned off the taps by the time Cyril Ramaphosa became president.
Within a handful of years, John Steenhuisen (nationally), Geordin Hill-Lewis (in the Western Cape) and Helen Zille woke up on third base and imagined they had hit a triple, and they have spread that message of achievement very well. The electorate does not seem to care if it is a real or imaginary achievement.
As for the rest; Gayton McKenzie’s appeal lies in the dissatisfaction and disillusionment of coloured people; Mmusi Maimane and Songezo Zibi will have to build their alliance if they want to get anywhere, and the Freedom Front Plus remain the “verkramptes” of Old Volksraad bros (the DA are, arguably, the “verligtes” of that old order), and have not quite made the transition to democratic South Africa. DM