DA leader John Steenhuisen was yesterday emboldened as he drew a lot more cheers from the party’s delegates than his contender, former Johannesburg mayor Mpho Phalatse.
The two-day DA elective congress, taking place in Midrand, kicked off yesterday and is expected to end today. It has been dubbed as the party’s biggest congress in its history, with more than 2,000 delegates attending to elect new leaders.
Steenhuisen goes head to head against Phalatse on the ballot paper. The voting results expected later this afternoon will confirm who will become the face of the DA’s campaign during next year’s general elections.
Phalatse’s campaign bucks the trend in which the DA has been shedding black leaders from within its ranks as the party aggressively sought to win back traditional voters, who lamented its ideological direction under Steenhuisen’s axed predecessor, Mmusi Maimane.
In his final speech to lobby delegates, Steenhuisen said Gauteng was next on the radar for the DA, a prospect that would see the province becoming the party’s second provincial administration after Western Cape.
He said that since taking over as party leader three years ago, he has worked hard to rebuild its structure. “We’ve come out of elections in 2021 stronger than ever before. And we are now on track for a record result in 2024, where we must bring the ANC below 50% and
rescue South Africa. This is our mission,” he said.
He said that after years of patiently building the party in opposition ranks and in government, the DA had “arrived at a point where we’re now just 12% behind the ANC in some polling”.
Phalatse said: “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. The idea of a liberal democratic party governing South Africa has come.”
She said the DA had cultivated a brand of good governance and “South Africans agree that when we govern, we govern better”. But, she said, the party had also experienced “negative growth between the 2016 and 2021 local government elections”.
“A total of 285 of our councillors lost their positions as elected public representatives in their communities. That, democrats, is not because our brand is inferior. But it is the truth of a trust deficit between us and the electorate. And that is what stands between us and our chances of becoming a national government.”
Phalatse said the congress was “an opportune moment for delegates to be bold and once and for all address this challenge”. “I’m ready to lead the DA on a process of introspection and repositioning from an opposition in parliament to a governing party in 2024.”
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