How the DA Benefited More Than the ANC From the GNU and What the ANC Might Now Do About That

Eighteen months into the Government of National Unity (GNU), polling conducted by the Social Research Foundation (SRF) in late 2025* suggests that the Democratic Alliance (DA) emerged from the arrangement with its credibility strengthened, while the African National Congress (ANC) absorbed most of the reputational risk.

Rather than rehabilitating the ANC’s standing, the GNU appears to have validated the DA’s long-standing claims about governance competence.

Across every major credibility indicator tested, the DA outperforms the ANC by wide margins. On clean governance, 34.9% of voters say the DA would do the best job, compared with 11.2% for the ANC. On accountability, the DA leads on 27.9% versus the ANC’s 18.1%. On good leadership, the gap widens further, with 31.3% selecting the DA and 15.2% the ANC. These are not marginal differences. They point to a durable perception gap.

Even on the defining feature of the GNU itself, working in coalitions, voters credit the DA rather than the ANC. The DA records 30.5% compared with the ANC’s 16.2%. This suggests that voters do not see the ANC as the stabilising force inside coalition government. Instead, the DA is widely viewed as the party making the arrangement function.

When voters are asked which party they most strongly associate with providing clean governance, 33.5% select the DA while just 11.5% select the ANC. On service delivery, the DA leads decisively on 39.1% compared with the ANC’s 16.5%.

By contrast, the ANC dominates the negative traits. A striking 73.2% of voters associate the ANC with making broken promises, and 62.8% say it only cares about itself. No other party comes close on either measure.

The data seems to align with a growing sense of thinking inside the ANC, even in the moderate and pro-GNU camps, that inviting the DA into national government was a strategic error. The argument there is that instead of diluting the DA’s brand, the GNU gave it a platform to prove competence in office while the ANC’s own credibility problems remained sticky and highly visible. In this reading, the coalition did not share reputational risk. It redistributed credibility, and it moved in the DA’s favour.

John Steenhuisen’s exit is seen as an opportunity to address the mistake. In the ANC’s thinking, it has the choice now to persist with a coalition that appears to have strengthened its main rival’s credibility, or it can pivot toward a minority government, regaining tactical control of the government even if that means more fragile parliamentary management.

Should it choose the latter the ANC would have to very carefully navigate the question of the public, and its own voters, being deeply invested in the idea of the GNU and of its success. Turf the DA out nonchalantly and the ANC may find itself even further down in the polls, especially if the minority government coincides with slippage in South African living standards.

*The Social Research Foundation’s Q4 2025 Market Survey was commissioned by the Foundation and conducted by Victory Research among 1 002 registered voters between 27 October and 14 November 2025 using telephonic CATI interviews. A single-frame random digit-dialling design was used, drawing from all possible South African mobile numbers to ensure that every number had an equal probability of selection, with national sim card penetration exceeding 250%, more than 90% of adults owning a phone, and mobile networks covering 99.8% of the population, giving universal practical coverage. The sample was fully weighted to match the national registered voter population across all key demographics, including language, age, race, gender, education, income, and urban or rural location. Turnout modelling assigned each respondent a probability of voting based on questions measuring their likelihood of participation, with the primary turnout model set at 52.8%. The poll carries a 4.0% margin of error at a 95% confidence level, with a design effect of 1.762.