A growing bevy of senior figures around the Democratic Alliance (DA) are feeling frustration at what they see as a challenging period for the party – but there’s much about which the party can feel reassured.

Politics is inherently dramatic, full of internal conflicts, and punctuated by factional fights. All that is certainly important and is presently the source of much of the frustration. But there is a another, more strategic plane to think along, and it is here, in how the party has shifted what it might want to think of as the “national strategic position”, that it has achieved success far beyond its own recognition.

Since January 2024, if the DA were to draw up a list of its achievements around this second plane, there’s a compelling story to tell.

It should start with how the DA played a pivotal role in breaking the political dominance of the African National Congress (ANC), bringing its representation below 50% in the 2024 national election. For the first time, South Africa would not be governed by a single dominant political force, but by a coalition of parties. This is the single most important shift that will ever occur in the national balance of power and marks a monumental moment in the country’s political history.

The shift was pregnant with country risk. But the DA worked well to engineer a political coalition with the ANC, successfully averting the risk of a hard-left lurch in policy, which would have caused irreparable damage to the country’s economic prospects and the living standards of its people, in time throwing it into political disorder and chaos as democracy faded in favour of populism and autocracy.

Shrewd

That was shrewd, as the only way for South Africa to be a high-growth and democratic unitary state is for a strong and stable DA, supported by the more established middle class, and a strong and stable ANC, supported by the aspirant middle class, to work together as partners more than adversaries in forming a national majority government. As this newspaper has long argued the policy and values gulf between DA and ANC voters is virtually non-existent and there is in fact far more historical common ground between certain core policy positions of the two parties than most analysts understand.

That trend is in turn supported by very strong numbers on public support, which continues to back the DA and ANC working together in government as partners wherever the opportunity arises. Related to that are high levels of public confidence that such a Government of National Unity may work to secure a prosperous future for South Africans. This is a remarkably important and fortuitous asset for the national strategic outlook.

The DA then entered the government and secured key ministries – an extraordinary change for a party that has historically been a small but influential liberal opposition. In government, the DA’s influence has been greater than commonly acknowledged.

At the Home Affairs Ministry, the DA has demonstrated how administrative professionalism can yield tangible results, setting a benchmark for the civil service. At the Finance Ministry, the party’s fiscal prudence has been instrumental in stabilising South Africa’s economic confidence. The DA’s indirect influence within the Cabinet on issues ranging from black economic empowerment (BEE) to foreign policy to corruption has been significant. These contributions have created a climate of opinion within the government broadly more open to the reforms South Africa urgently needs to thrive.

Even where nominally intangible, this influence has been crucial in securing South Africa’s exit from the Financial Action Task Force Grey List and achieving its first credit rating upgrade in decades. Those two accomplishments in turn allowed the rand to draw the maximum benefit from a weakening dollar as South Africa’s inflation risk receded, allowing the growth outlook, while still low by emerging market standards, to lift 50% from that of a year ago.

Historic levels of support

The DA also saw its support rise to historic levels. In the 2024 election, in aggregate, the party secured more votes across Gauteng, the Western Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal than any other party. These three provinces are South Africa’s most important economic regions, accounting for nearly two-thirds of the country’s GDP. In that same election, the DA emerged as the most popular party in South Africa’s metros – cementing a profoundly important change in the national strategic position.

In both cases, DA support among black voters hit a record high as ANC support in black, rural, and South Africa’s poorest areas fell below 50%.

That shift has been reinforced by answers to polling questions, such as which party has the best policies, governs best, and is most accountable, where the DA now consistently leads the ANC – another extraordinary shift in the strategic environment.

In terms of policy, the DA has regained the ideological clarity it lost a decade ago via its new proposals on BEE. It advocates replacing race-based criteria with a focus on material disadvantage – an approach many ANC leaders now privately concede is correct. The proposal has garnered significant support, with more than 50% of ANC voters expressing backing for it.

Both the Presidency and the ANC have agreed to talk about the proposals, and the government has gone even further to announce a review of the how the policy has historically been practised. The ideological basis of empowerment policy is the single most important South African strategic question given that empowerment policy is the foundational policy upon which all other economic and social policy rests –  and the DA now leads the ANC in shaping public thinking around that policy.

Looking ahead

Looking ahead to the next local government elections, the DA is polling better than the ANC across the metros. Helen Zille’s candidacy, with her Johannesburg campaign positioned as a barometer for South Africa’s future, is now supported by more than half of all voters in the country, including many ANC voters and those in Gauteng. This marks another extraordinary shift in the national strategic position.

By splitting the thinking around the party between the day-to-day operational questions and related dramas at one level and the strategic equation at another level it becomes easier to reach a conclusion on its performance of the past 24 months. While internal struggles and short-term challenges are inevitable, the DA’s long-term strategic successes have been more than substantial.

It has effectively shifted the national political balance, gained a plurality of support across a core of South Africa’s most important future voting markets, and established itself as a key influence over the policies of the South African government and investor perceptions of the country.

Pierneef was one of South Africa's greatest artists, known for his paintings of South African vistas. This column named after him aims to do something similar - sketch the broad vistas of South Africa's domestic landscape.