South Africa is approaching a pivotal political moment: 2026 will mark the end of one era and the beginning of another. It will be a year in which the centre will either hold or crumble amid leadership changes and a local government election.
Yet the “political season” commences tomorrow with an unusual, almost eerie calm. Compared with the discombobulating uncertainty of geopolitics and the disruptive belligerence of the US president, South Africa’s politics appear relatively stable.
This is mainly because of the consistency of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s leadership. His steadiness and composure under pressure should be considered an asset to the country — in sharp contrast to the erratic leadership evident in several others — despite the sometimes frustratingly slow tempo of his decision-making.
The failure to appoint an ambassador to Washington for nearly a year, for example — particularly at a time of such precarity in relations between the two countries — is inexplicable.
In addition, the government of national unity (GNU) has settled into a more stable pattern of behaviour; the ANC has finally accepted that it no longer commands a majority, while the DA has begun to acknowledge that sharing power requires different conduct from that of opposition.
The first half of last year included several crisis moments for the GNU, with the DA just hours away from leaving — or being pushed out — on three separate occasions. Since then, a new culture of governing has emerged, one with a greater chance of protecting this centralist coalition from the inevitable and unpredictable events that can easily derail a power-sharing arrangement.
The ANC is facing a steep and rapid decline; the local government election could even send it into free fall. This is the moment for the DA to go in for the kill.
Credit is due to the outgoing leader of the DA. Though he was inevitably involved in some of the skirmishes during those febrile early months of the GNU’s life, he also found a way to stick the course and rise to the leadership challenge. At times he had to hold the line against loud voices within his own party, whose visceral dislike of the ANC obscured their ability to recognise the benefits that come from holding executive power.
Investors and business leaders in particular want to know whether the change in DA leadership will negatively affect its participation in the GNU. Probably not — especially if, as seems almost certain, Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis becomes the next leader at the party’s April congress.
Once Hill-Lewis made it known he was no longer willing to bide his time and was ready to step up to leadership, John Steenhuisen was toast. The knives were already out for Steenhuisen, from the “right” and the “left” of his party.
Which brings one back to the fundamental choice and challenge facing the DA and its leadership: to pander to its base, much of which is conservative and resistant to social transformation, or to recognise that a big political moment is there to be seized in the local government election — but that seizing it will require offering a much more inclusive political value proposition.
The ANC is facing a steep and rapid decline; the local government election could even send it into free fall. This is the moment for the DA to go in for the kill.
As a more agile politician, with that rare ability to “connect” with a wide variety of audiences, Hill-Lewis is more than capable of seizing the moment — but only if he is willing to make a decisive choice: to risk losing some of the party’s base in favour of expanding its appeal to a wider demographic, much as former leader Mmusi Maimane was doing when he led the DA to an almost 27% share of the vote in the 2016 local government election.
When “Ramaphoria” prompted a short-lived bounce-back for the ANC in the 2019 national election, the DA’s old guard panicked and sent Maimane packing, triggering a major exodus of many of the party’s other black leaders. The DA retreated towards its conservative, neoliberal base and entered a period of difficult introspection. Veteran leader Helen Zille returned to rebuild the party and its strategy.
If Hill-Lewis can now offer the same kind of relatively inclusive, centralist vision that he has projected in Cape Town, it could bring his party’s uncomfortable 10-year transition to an end.
Alongside this leadership shift, the ANC will soon face its own equivalent moment. Its national elective conference is only at the end of 2027, but time will fly, and the political consequences of the local government election could be severe. If the ANC performs badly, the threat to the GNU will be far greater than that posed by a change in DA leadership. A poor result will shape the party’s choice of its next leader, the identity of whom remains deeply uncertain.
Over the next 22 months South Africa’s two biggest parties must elect new leaders. Together, they will decide the fate of the GNU and whether longer term the country’s political centre will hold or disintegrate, vacating the space for populist nationalists.
• Calland is visiting adjunct professor at the Wits School of Governance and a founding partner of The Paternoster Group: African Political Insight
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