Geordin Hill-Lewis, the newly elected leader of the DA, has wasted no time in launching an early election campaign in Gauteng after succeeding John Steenhuisen at the weekend.
Hill-Lewis, the mayor of Cape Town, joined the party’s Johannesburg mayoral candidate Helen Zille on a campaign trail in Soweto on Monday. Later that day, he was seen assisting Tshwane mayoral candidate Cilliers Brink canvass for votes in Laudium. On Tuesday, Hill-Lewis led the DA’s campaign in Mogale City, west of Johannesburg.
His election at the party’s federal congress in Midrand was decisive, with an overwhelming majority backing him.
The new leadership team includes former Tshwane mayor Solly Msimanga as federal chairperson, deputy finance minister Ashor Sarupen as chairperson of the federal council, education minister Siviwe Gwarube as deputy, Brink, and communications minister Solly Malatsi as deputy federal chairpersons.
Sarupen will be deputised by Cape Town MMC for public safety JP Smith, Thomas Walters, and Carl Popham. Mark Burke was elected federal finance chairperson.
In his first speech as leader, Hill-Lewis declared his ambition to make the DA the largest party after the general elections, rejecting the idea of remaining a junior partner in a government of national unity. “Our ambition must be to lead the national government. That is the next chapter in our party’s proud history. And we will write it together,” he said.
Yet while the ground may be fertile for an alternative government to replace the faltering ANC, Hill-Lewis’s speech suggested continuity rather than change.
The DA appears set to maintain its opposition to broad-based black economic empowerment, the National Health Insurance, the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act, and land reform legislation aimed at redress.
Some South Africans may be eager to see the ANC removed from power, but the majority of voters are not naive about the transformation required to uplift the black majority, who were treated as second-class citizens for decades.
To dismiss empowerment initiatives as mere “crony enrichment schemes” risks alienating the very electorate the DA needs to win over.
Any party that resists robust transformation is, in effect, defending the status quo − one in which most black South Africans remain spectators in their own economy.
If Hill-Lewis and his leadership collective are serious about becoming the country’s largest party, they must decide: will they cling to policies that comfort their traditional base, or embrace a vision that acknowledges the unequal playing field and commits to genuine redress?
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