JOHANNESBURG, Gauteng — The Democratic Alliance must change the way it speaks to South Africans if it wants to break through its electoral ceiling and overtake the ANC outright, political analyst Professor Piet Croucamp of North-West University has warned, following the party’s final campaign rally ahead of next week’s local government elections.
Recent polling suggests the DA has opened up a substantial lead over the ANC in the City of Johannesburg. But Croucamp argued that the lead is unlikely to translate into solo rule, with DA figurehead Helen Zille having already ruled out any agreement with the EFF and the MK Party — narrowing the party’s options once the votes are counted.
‘Zero’ chance of an outright majority
Asked about the DA’s realistic prospects of governing alone, Croucamp was blunt: the chances were “zero,” outside of Cape Town, where the party has an established governing record and is expected to retain its majority.
In metros such as Johannesburg, and possibly Tshwane, he said the DA would have to look to the ANC. The Freedom Front and the ACDP — historically loyal allies of the DA — are simply too small to make up the numbers, while the EFF and MK Party have long, acrimonious relationships with the DA and want constitutional changes the party cannot accommodate.
Croucamp said voices inside the DA are already asking whether the party should approach the ANC to negotiate a stronger deal than the one it struck as a minority partner in the government of national unity. A Johannesburg-focused coalition, he suggested, could be used to push opportunistic and corrupt interests out of municipal supply chains. The ANC, he noted, contains many capable people, and poor governance by the party does not mean every member is working against the public interest.
The narrative problem
Croucamp’s central criticism was that the DA continues to blur the line between the ANC and the state itself, a message he described as too divisive to win new voters.
The moment, he argued, calls for a unifying pitch — that voting for the DA is simply voting for South Africa. He pointed out that the party received roughly 150,000 fewer votes in the 2024 election than in the previous one, suggesting it may have hit a ceiling.
That ceiling, he said, is not about competence. Surveys show about 64% of South Africans believe the DA would govern better, and he cited its record in the Western Cape and in Midvaal as evidence that the party delivers where it governs.
The puzzle is why that reputation does not convert into ballots. According to Croucamp, around 3.4 million black South Africans have indicated they would consider voting DA under certain circumstances, yet only about 52,000 actually do so on election day. In Johannesburg, he said, roughly 35% of residents express support for the party in surveys, but only about 30% follow through at the ballot box.
Turnout among supporters, he added, differs sharply by group: about 56% for black DA supporters, roughly 63% among coloured supporters, and around 90% among white supporters.
Grants, NSFAS and the trust deficit
Part of the explanation, Croucamp said, is fear. Many black voters worry that social grants would disappear under a DA government, or that NSFAS and other forms of state support would be cut.
His advice was for the party to make an explicit election issue of its commitment to pay and increase grants — even at the cost of losing some conservative white support — and to frame its promise around governing in the interest of the whole country, rather than any single constituency, whether white voters, liberals or the wealthy.
Voters, he said, must trust not only the DA’s delivery record, but its narrative, its composition and its identity.
Funding and the ‘investable South Africa’ argument
On the more than R100 million in political funding the DA had reported as at August 2026, Croucamp said he had no problem with the party’s financial backers, describing the DA as the most demographically representative party in the country.
Donors, he said, are typically invested in job creation, economic stability and making South Africa investable, and see value in funding a strong opposition. He pointed to the Western Cape’s lower unemployment, stronger labour absorption and better-maintained infrastructure as factors that reduce investment risk and attract capital.
Good governance is possible elsewhere too, he argued, citing KwaZulu-Natal public works MEC Martin Meyer, who secured a clean audit in a notoriously difficult province and, according to Croucamp, kept the construction mafia out of roughly 66% of school, hospital and infrastructure projects.
ANC’s ‘Achilles heel’ and voter despondency
The interview coincided with ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa arriving at Peter Mokaba Stadium in Limpopo for his party’s own final rally.
Croucamp acknowledged that much has changed since 1994 — “sometimes because of the ANC and sometimes in spite of the ANC” — but said voters no longer ask whether they are better off. They ask what opportunities exist for their children.
He recalled the late economist Mike Schüssler telling him that half of each year’s cohort of 19-year-olds would never work in the formal sector in their lifetimes. Under Thabo Mbeki, with Trevor Manuel at finance, growth of 4.5% to 5% and around nine million jobs created showed what was possible, he said, arguing that continuity in GEAR and AsgiSA could have pushed unemployment into single digits rather than the roughly 42% recorded on the expanded definition.
Ramaphosa, he said, deserves credit as the first president to openly acknowledge these failures, but is hamstrung by the complexity of his own organisation.
The bigger danger, Croucamp warned, is not that ANC voters defect to rivals — the MK Party sits around 14% and the EFF around 10% to 11%, with COPE at roughly 10% — but that they simply stop participating. In the last election, he said, only 16% of all eligible South Africans voted ANC, 23% of registered voters, and about 39.86% of those who actually turned out.
Where government is absent — in informal settlements where police do not arrive and services never come — and opposition parties fail to win trust, he said, citizens begin losing faith in democracy itself. That, he called his greatest fear for South Africa.
