Hill-Lewis Frontrunner to Succeed Steenhuisen

Geordin Hill-Lewis, the mayor of Cape Town, is emerging as one of the most plausible successors to John Steenhuisen as leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA), particularly as the party looks to consolidate its governing record, renew its leadership bench, and navigate a more fluid coalition era.

The Common Sense has been told that Hill-Lewis could be elected unopposed at the party’s conference in April.

Hill-Lewis was born in 1987 in Plettenberg Bay, moved to Cape Town with his family as a young boy, and became mayor of the city in 2021.

Prior to becoming Cape Town’s mayor, Hill-Lewis had a long career in parliamentary politics, first becoming a Member of Parliament (MP) in 2011, at the age of 24, and then being appointed to the shadow cabinet in 2012 by Lindiwe Mazibuko. At the time Hill-Lewis was the youngest person elected as an MP in post-apartheid South Africa. He also founded the DA’s student wing, the Democratic Alliance Student Organisation, while studying at the University of Cape Town.

He resigned from Parliament in November 2021, after the DA won the 2021 local government elections in Cape Town, having been announced as the DA’s mayoral candidate for the city in August that year.

Hill-Lewis, who already had a reputation as a capable technocrat and administrator, has shown himself willing to make the hard decisions necessary in South African politics. In 2023 he stared down Cape Town’s taxi industry after he made the decision to impound taxis that were unroadworthy or driven by unlicensed drivers.

The city has also invested heavily in infrastructure under Hill-Lewis's watch. Under him, Cape Town budgeted to spend R12 billion on capital expenditure in 2025, compared to the R7 billion budgeted by Johannesburg, despite the two cities having roughly similar populations.

And while Cape Town has been criticised in the past for allegedly neglecting poorer communities in the city, the opposite is true. Compared to “townships” in other metros, areas such as Gugulethu and Khayelitsha in Cape Town have lower rates of poverty, higher rates of employment, and more widespread access to sanitation and electricity than similar communities in the rest of the country. Hill-Lewis also said that 75% of Cape Town’s budget could be considered “pro-poor”.

Hill-Lewis has also been a strong advocate for decentralisation, and for Cape Town to be given more responsibility for governance functions.

The city still faces serious problems. It has the second highest murder rate of any metro in South Africa (after Nelson Mandela Bay), primarily as a result of gang violence. Furthermore, there are large numbers of people moving to the city, ranging from poor people coming from the Eastern Cape looking for better opportunities to middle-class Jo’burgers semigrating to escape dysfunction in Gauteng, which is placing significant strain on the city’s existing infrastructure.

If Hill-Lewis is elected as the new leader of the DA, he is likely to remain as mayor of Cape Town at least for a time. One of his predecessors, as both Cape Town mayor and DA leader, Helen Zille, handled both positions concurrently with great success between 2006 and 2009.

If Hill-Lewis does succeed Steenhuisen he will take over a party in a very different context from that in which most of his predecessors found themselves . The DA is now a party of not only municipal and provincial government but also national government. In aggregate, it is the single biggest party in South Africa’s three richest provinces and in its eight metros and is also polling higher than it has in any other time in its history – and it is with a few points of the African National Congress.

The party has much in its favour currently but there are many possible pitfalls. Hill-Lewis will have his work cut out to ensure that the DA remains on its current growth trajectory.