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The Patriotic Alliance (PA) has won a swathe of by-elections in the Western Cape in recent months, with a real possibility now existing that the Democratic Alliance (DA) could be brought under 50% in the province in the next election.

The two most recent by-elections were held on Wednesday. In the first, in Stellenbosch, the PA took a seat off the DA, while in the other, in George, the DA won a seat off the African National Congress (ANC), but with the PA growing strongly.

In Stellenbosch, the DA saw its vote share drop from the 48% it won in the 2021 local government elections (LGE) to 31% on Wednesday. In raw votes, this was a decline from the 924 votes it won in 2021 to 677 on Wednesday.

The PA, meanwhile, saw its vote share jump from 3% to 40%, going from 62 votes to 850.

The other parties that competed in the by-election were GOOD, which won 20% on Wednesday, down from 22% in 2021, and the ANC, which saw its vote share increase from 7% in 2021 to 9% on Wednesday.

The PA’s candidate in the ward for the by-election was Elsabe Vermeulen. She had previously been the DA councillor for the ward, before defecting to the PA. She will now finish her term as a ward councillor, albeit under the green banner of the PA, rather than the blue of the DA.

The PA now holds two seats on the 45-seat Stellenbosch council, with the DA still on a relatively comfortable majority with 27 of the 45 seats.

In the other by-election the DA took a ward off the ANC in George.

Here the dynamic was similar to Stellenbosch – Jarques Esau, the sitting councillor (this time from the ANC), defected to another party and won the by-election for his new party.

On Wednesday Esau won the ward for the DA, winning 43% of the vote, a sharp increase from the 19% the DA won in 2021, and enough to give the DA the victory. In raw votes it also saw a large increase, going from 407 votes in 2021 to 1 042 on Wednesday.

The PA was the primary challenger, with that party winning 34% of the vote and 819 total votes. In 2021, the PA had won only four votes in the ward, so this is a remarkable turnaround for the party.

The ANC, which had won the ward in 2021, saw its vote share slump to 14% (349 votes) on Wednesday, from 30% (646 votes) in 2021.

The Economic Freedom Fighters brought up the rear with 9% on Wednesday, a similar proportion to what it won in 2021.

A local party, the Plaaslike Besorgde Inwoners, had won 20% of the vote in the ward in 2021, but did not field a candidate on Wednesday.

The DA now holds 25 seats on the 55-seat George council, with the ANC remaining the second-biggest party with nine seats.

The PA has now won more than 15 seats in by-elections off the ANC and the DA. While most of these have been in the Western Cape, the PA has also won by-elections against these parties in the Northern Cape, Eastern Cape, and Gauteng.

The PA’s good performance will be giving both the ANC and the DA strategists sleepless nights, with the real possibility now existing that the DA could lose its majority in the province in the next election.

Western Cape politics has always been more fluid than the rest of the country, with coloured voters acting as something of a “swing” vote, and the question being whether the ANC or the DA could win more of the coloured vote, and thus win power in the province.

However, there was always the question of the “sleeping giant” of coloured nationalism – and it now seems that the PA is emerging as the party that could harness this sleeping giant.

If the PA can become the party of choice for coloured people, the demographics in the Western and Northern Cape favour it. Coloured people are the single-biggest population group in both those provinces, at about 40%.

The DA’s majority in the Western Cape is more fragile than it’s been for some time – in the 2024 provincial election the DA won 53.4% of the vote (down about three points from 2019 and six points from 2014). The PA won 7.8% in 2024, having not even been on the ballot in the 2019 election in the province. It is not possible to determine where the PA’s support came from with any accuracy, but at least some of it will have come from former DA voters. If the PA’s growth trend continues the DA could see itself below 50% in the next election.

At the same time, while the PA’s by-election results in recent times are something to take note of, there is a difference between campaigning in a single by-election, and being able to focus all of a party’s resources there. In a broader election, such as a provincial election or the next LGE, which will be held in November, smaller parties like the PA may struggle to compete with larger parties like the DA or ANC. In addition, polling conducted by the Social Research Foundation in conjunction with The Common Sense shows that the PA is polling at around 3% (slightly more than the 2% it won in the 2024 national election). This is within the poll’s margin of error, so it is not clear there is any breakthrough yet by the party.

Nevertheless, it does seem that the PA is tapping into an unmined reef in South African politics, and the seam of coloured nationalism could turn out to be a rich one.