ANC and DA Emerge as Twin Pillars of South African Politics

As the gap between the African National Congress (ANC) and the Democratic Alliance (DA) narrows, the logic of treating each other as partners in stabilising South Africa, rather than as mortal enemies, grows steadily stronger.

Fresh data from a November Social Research Foundation poll, carried in this newspaper, places the ANC at 37% and the DA at 32% on a 53% voter turnout model, with both parties polling in the 30% band and separated by only five points. That profile confirms that South Africa is settling into a de facto two-party system, with the ANC and DA as the primary contenders for executive authority.

The social bases of the two parties also overlap in important ways. In the 2024 election the DA sourced just over half of its support from the established middle classes in suburbs and commercial centres, while the ANC drew slightly less than half from the aspirant middle class on the urban fringes. These are constituencies whose material interests align, since policies that protect and grow the established middle class are the same policies that allow the aspirant middle class to secure a foothold and climb.

On that reading there is little that should divide the ANC and DA on the core economic and governance reforms that South Africa needs. A constructive outcome would be one in which the DA effectively mandates the established middle class, and the ANC speaks for the aspirant middle class, with working in tandem inside a shared governing framework.

That arrangement would also help the ANC to solidify its rural base. Many rural voters are older and deeply invested in the fortunes of children and grandchildren who have gone to cities in pursuit of opportunities that might lift them into a middle-class standard of living. A partnership that aligns urban reform with the aspirations of rural families would speak directly to that hope.

Within such a framework the two parties could come to understand each other as co-custodians of South Africa’s recovery rather than as absolute rivals. The progress already recorded under the Government of National Unity from the recent mini-budget and easing bond yields, to the shelving of the National Health Insurance proposal in its original form, a marked improvement in electricity availability, accelerating port and rail reforms highlighted by the deputy finance minister on this newspaper’s Talking Sense podcast, and the successful hosting of the G20 suggests what is possible.

If that mindset takes hold over the coming decade, South Africa stands a realistic chance of turning those early gains into a more durable trajectory of prosperity, institutional stability, and personal freedom, with the ANC and DA acting less as enemies and more as the twin engines of a shared national project.

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.