DA better be woke to the realities

Newly elected DA Federal leader, Geordin Hill-Lewis delivers his speech at Gallagher Convention centre April Midrand in Johannesburg,10 April 2026,on the last day of DA Federal Congress 2026. Picture: Nigel Sibanda/The Citizen The country’s former official opposition in parliament, the DA, held a successful elective conference in Midrand at the weekend. At face value, it appears there was a real changing of the guard at national leadership level, but only time will tell.

For the first time in an eternity, former Cape Town mayor and Western Cape premierHelen Zille is officially without a post. She has been replaced by Solly Msimanga as federal chair of the party, a position Zille had made the second most-powerful position in the party, after party leader. Msimanga, Gauteng provincial leader of the DA, should, on paper, be the second most-powerful leader in the party to Cape Town mayorGeordin Hill-Lewis, who has chosen to remain in his current position instead of joining government as part of the government of national unity (GNU).

Hill-Lewis and Msimanga have set themselves the target of making the DA the country’s biggest party by electoral votes. Given this country’s fragmented electorate, it is not an impossible or improbable task. But there are mountains the DA must climb to reach the summit.

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Outgoing federal chair Zille believes she has saved the party from “woke, left, ethno-populism”. This is the first hurdle the DA needs to overcome to woo new voters. The voters that the DA will need to fulfil its hopes of becoming the biggest political party in this country are the black middle class.

Msimanga asked the right question in his campaign to be federal leader: why the country’s biggest political party, the ANC, shed close to 17% of its voters in the last general election, yet the DA failed to pick up any of the voters that its biggest opponent shed? Conservatism that says it is okay to hold a very narrow view of the world trumps wokedom. The US president has led people, such as Zille, to think saving a political party from being “woke” or its influences will help the DA.

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