In the latest Electoral Road Show with Chris Steyn and analyst Supremo Wayne Sussman, he dissects the Democratic Alliance’s big Cabinet reshuffle, particularly the ministerial demotion of former party leader by the new leader Geordin Hill-Lewis, as well as the posts now allotted to the Willie Aucamp, David Maynier, Yusuf Cassim and Gauteng veteran Jack Bloom. “I think that Hill-Lewis had no choice and the DA had no choice but to move and act against Steenhuisen. Because it must have been looking at its polling and worrying about the Afrikaans voters. ...these new ministers and deputy ministers will have to show their mettle…and the DA will hope that it can arrest decline, certainly amongst Afrikaans voters, but also the voters it's been losing to the Patriotic Alliance.” Analysing the latest by-election results, Sussman describes EFF support “totally collapsing” in Buffalo City where it came close to being the second biggest party in 2024. As for Jo’burg Mayor Dada Morero first elevated and then removed as municipal intervention convenor for the province, Sussman says: “I think this says less about Dado Morero and more about the state of the ANC in Gauteng: that the infighting is vicious, that the contestation and competition is as fierce as ever, and this is not a good sign for the ANC a few months out of the Local Government Election.”.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..Edited transcript of the interview.Chris Steyn (00:01.068)Welcome to another Electoral Road Show with me, Chris Steyn, and analyst Supremo Wayne Sussman. Welcome, Wayne.Wayne (00:09.841)Good morning, Chris. Nice to be speaking to you. This was the penultimate round of by-elections.Chris Steyn (00:16.962)Before we go to the results, Wayne, let us talk about the Democratic Alliance's Cabinet reshuffle. What impact do you think that could have on the upcoming local government elections?Wayne (00:28.701)Correct. So let's just take a step back. In the Government of National Unity, there is an agreement with all the political parties, and of course the ANC and those political parties, and there was a very clear agreement over what positions, what ministerial positions, what deputy ministerial positions would go to each political party. So if we'll remember, last year John Steenhuisen had a big falling out with Dion George, and Dion George was dismissed from his position. That post was a DA mandated position, and therefore Steenhuisen made the recommendation to President Ramaphosa, who then effected the change. And this is the same thing here. We know that Geordin Hill-Lewis and John Steenhuisen, because they've said it on record, are close friends or might have been close friends - and Hill-Lewis refused to challenge Steenhuisen at the recent Federal Congress because it's his close friend. And then of course Steenhuisen made the decision to stand down, and Geordin Hill-Lewis got elected leader. And I think that's important to understand because I do not think that when Geordin Hill-Lewis woke up as the leader of the DA, it was his intention to sideline John Steenhuisen immediately or imminently. And obviously the DA must be looking at the Minister of Agriculture. They must be looking at John Steenhuisen's performance and the way he has been perceived in handling the Foot-and-Mouth Disease, the FMD crisis in South Africa, which is affecting cattle farmers across South Africa. And then with a recent spat of the Chief of Staff, I think that Hill-Lewis had no choice and the DA had no choice but to move and act against Steenhuisen. Because it must have been looking at its polling and worrying about the Afrikaans voters. The voters John Steenhuisen worked so hard in 2024 to get back to the DA, and voters which are going to be key to the party in the road to the 2026 Local Government Election. So I thinkWayne (02:49.868)That was the main reshuffle. Of course, John Steenhuisen gets demoted from the Minister of Agriculture to the Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry. So remember that vacancy was actually created by Andrew Whitfield. He was then replaced by Alexandra Abrahams, Member of Parliament. Now she's also been moved to a new deputy minister position. So that's the first one. He's been replaced by Willie Oukamp. Willie Oukamp is the person who replaced Dion George. If we remember correctly, Willie Oukam was the National Spokesperson of the DA. He had a profile within the DA. And I think, again, here is a recognition of the DA that it is concerned that it is losing Afrikaans voters, and this must be showing up in the polling.What's interesting about Willie Oukamp is that while he comes from Kuruman, his family has strong roots in Limpopo, in the Waterberg region, and if my memory serves me correctly, he also has business interests in the Northwest. And I say this because I'm sure that amongst conservative Afrikaans voters, the DA is very vulnerable in parts of the Northwest and Limpopo. So I think they believe that Oukamp would arrest that decline.It's also interesting to see David Maynier, the longstanding MEC in the Western Cape, who I think was most recently the MEC for Education. He is being promoted to Parliament to step into Willie Oukamp’s portfolio, which is Minister of Environment and Fisheries and Forestry. So that is a big promotion for David Maynier, who's seen as this technocrat politician, and someone who's been around the Western Cape Cabinet for for many years. The other interesting moves: is the young member of parliament Yusuf Cassim from the Eastern Cape, from Nelson Mandela Bay, a student activist, a student leader in the DA, becoming the Deputy Minister of Higher Education. And then the other interesting promotion was the longtime well-known…Wayne (05:09.168)Health Spokesperson for the DA in Gauteng. I think he's been in the Gauteng legislature - They call him the Father of the House - since 1994, Jack Bloom, who has now been promoted to the Deputy Minister of Water and Sanitation. He's been covering health his entire political career. It'll be interesting to see how he adapts to water and sanitation. So the DA are affecting these changes in a Local Government Election year. I mean, of course, the president has to act on it, but these new ministers and deputy ministers will have to show their mettle, will have to show what they're made of, and the DA will hope that it can arrest decline, certainly amongst Afrikaans voters, but also the voters it's been losing to the Patriotic Alliance. And finally, to gin up its base to make sure that its supporters see this cabinet reshuffle, support the cabinet reshuffle, support the decision by the leader Geordin Hill-Lewis and hope that the party supporters respond in November to this.Chris Steyn (06:18.443)Hm, Jack Bloom's move to Cabinet was certainly long overdue. He has a fantastic track record.Wayne (06:25.338)Yeah, but he's been in the Gauteng legislature his whole life. You take David Maynier, if my memory serves me correctly, he started out in Parliament. Jack Bloom has never left the Gauteng legislature. So it's gonna be interesting to see him now having to move to Cape Town, to Pretoria, because I mean essentially he's been a Johannesburg-based politician. But he's someone who's respected across party lines for his work in the health sector.It'd be interesting to see how an opposition, a longtime opposition activist spokesperson, someone who lifted the lid on maladministration, lifted the lid on corruption, lifted the lid on poor service delivery, can now become a key deputy minister and implement government policy and improve water and sanitation in South Africa, and how he's going to work with a with a minister from another political party from the ANC. So these are all interesting things to observe and let's see how the president respondsJust a reminder that the president also has a vacancy because I know there's an acting minister of Social Development, but you'll remember Minister Tolashe was relieved of her duties. So I wonder if the minister will use this request by the DA to effect some other cabinet changes as well.Chris Steyn (07:54.069)Okay, let us go to last night's by-election results, WayneWayne (07:58.845)So we had two by-elections, the final by-elections in the Eastern Cape and the final metropolitan area by elections. Of our eight metropolitan areas, Buffalo City is the least populated, but a metro is a metro. and we know that this is also the metro where the ANC is the strongest. Its mayor, Princess Faka, has come under criticism lately.And these by-elections took place because the two ANC ward councillors defected to the Patriotic Alliance, which told me that…they saw that there was a path to growth here, that the PA could affect some positive change in Buffalo City, but also there was definitely factionalism and infighting with the ANC. So, Chris, the ANC will be delighted with last night's showing. It caps off what we've seen beyond the Sarah Baartman district, which is that western region of the Eastern Cape, and beyond Nelson Mandela Bay. In the rest of the Eastern Cape, the ANC has been performing swimming over the last five years. And here again we saw this. In Ward One, where the previous ward councillor ran under the PA colours, the ANC's vote share was essentially the exact same, declining 1% from 46% to 45%. The DA declined much more, falling from 41% to 23% of the vote. And I'll get into those numbers now. A surprise in third place. The United Democratic Movement getting 16% of the vote up from 1%. The PA up from 1% to 13%. And then two other parties I must make mention of. The EFF support totally collapsing, falling from 8% to 1%. And the South African Communist Party, one would think that in a more urban area, that an area where there's more industrial jobs, they would have a better chance of success. They also only got one percent of the vote. Wayne (10:23.996)A very poor result for the SACP. So let's just break this down because I'd have loved to have done a through line with both by-elections, but this Ward One is particularly interesting. Duncan Village is a township part of Ward One, overwhelmingly black Xhosa speaking African voters. Then there's the area of Pefferville, which is a Coloured area, and then there's the area of Braelyn which is also part of this ward, which is Muslim and Indian speaking. So when we break it down, let's start with Duncan Village. Now, as I said, the ANC's vote share held in the ward. We know that its support amongst Xhosa speaking areas has been very strong. Incidentally, they lost ground in Duncan Village here yesterday. The big winners here were the United Democratic Movement, who really I think got over 27% of the votes, and then in the 30s in the other Duncan Village voting district. So the UDM really making its mark. What helped the ANC here is we always talk about differential turnout. The turnout in Duncan Village was higher than the other parts of the ward. So if the ANC is losing votes in its stronghold, and it managed to essentially get the exact same percentage as last time. How did they do it? We go to Pefferville, and we know that across the Eastern Cape, across the Western Cape, and in many parts across the Northern Cape, there are exceptions, but in many other parts of the Northern Cape, the ANC has been struggling with Coloured voters. But they came first in Pefferville yesterday, this Coloured area of Buffalo City, beating the DA who came third. The DA got twenty-five percent, the PA got twenty-seven percent, and the ANC got forty-five percent. The big losers here, Chris, were the DA who declined from sixty percent to twenty-five percent; they'll be very concerned about Pefferville. So we've this is how the ANC is able to stabilise its support in Ward One with its growth amongst the Coloured community in Pefferville.Wayne (12:48.112)Then finally in Braelyn, again, this is where traditionally the Muslim community and the Indian community live. The DA actually grew here dramatically from 64% to 74% of the vote. The PA also grew and the ANC declined. Now, turnout is very low in Braelyn, but again, I have to go into the details here, into the minutiae, just to show these moves. But just to cap it off: declines to the DA, even though they grew in the Muslim and Indian area of the ward. They lost a lot of Black support last night and they lost a lot of Coloured support last night. Great growth for the PA, particularly in the Coloured part of the ward. The ANC stabilising because of its growth in the Coloured area, the EFF support totally collapsing. And I'm gonna come back to this at the end because here I can draw a through line on the EFF support. And SACP barely making its mark. Chris, when we go to Ward 10, which is the next ward I want to look at. I don't know if you have questions about ward one.Chris Steyn (14:01.099)No, continue, Wayne.Wayne (14:02.422)Okay, sure. When we look at Ward 10, this was not as diverse as ward one. There's an area called Buffalo Flats, which is both Coloured and Xhosa speakers, well, people, and then Amalinda, which is a typical township. This is in the Eastbank part of Buffalo City. And here, Chris, the ANC will look at this result and say, How do we do this in other townships across metropolitan areas in South Africa. Many people have been writing the ANC off. In Ward 10, they grow from 55% to 65%. Great growth. Who came second her in the township ward. Last time it was the DA, this time it was the PA, growing from 2% to 13%. The DA declining, but not as badly as what they did in Ward One, declining from 17% to 12%. And the EFF support halving, more than halving, from 11% to 5%. And the UDM and a range of other parties barely making the mark. Again, turnout slightly lower, whereas in Ward One was slightly higher. But that shows you that the voters showed up yesterday. And here again, the by-election is because the ward councillor defected to the PA, but here the ward councillors…didn't stand for the PA. Key to understand how did the ANC grow dramatically? In some of the more diverse areas where the Coloured and Black voters, the ANC support grew. In its historic stronghold of Amalinda, its support grew. The PA grew by its support in the area of Buffalo Flats.But in essence, another disappointing result for the EFF, and I want to comment here on the EFF as we bring the by-election analysis to a close. In 2024, we remember that the EFF's national vote share declined. It declined because of KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo in the North West Province.Wayne (16:17.048)One of the areas, Chris, where it grew was in a place like Buffalo City. It grew from 12% to 16%. And it came very close to being the second largest party in Buffalo City. It almost beat the DA here. We're a few months out from the local government election. This is one of the areas where the EFF would have believed it would have done well. And there its support fell from 8% to 1% and 11% to 5%.I don't know if they had an off Wednesday, but this was a metropolitan area the EFF would have had great hopes. If I was them I'd be concerned about this result. If I'm the South African Communist Party and the DA, I'm also concerned about these results. If I'm the ANC, I'm very satisfied.Chris Steyn (17:04.747)Meanwhile, Dada Morera must feel like he is in a political game of musical chairs, WayneWayne (17:12.272)Yeah, Chris, this is something we see in uMkhonto weSizwe. We see this playbook quite often, where there's a revolving door of leadership and midnight reshuffles. This is not part of the ANC playbook. Yes, there was Des van Rooyen, the Minister of Weekend special, but that was when Zuma was the president. Generally speaking, when ANC people get appointed within the party or in municipal positions or provincial positions or national positions, they hold those positions unless there's a crisis. This is very rare to see a leader…called the crisis convener, the convener of the crisis convener of municipalities in Gauteng being relieved of those duties. I think this says less about Dado Morero and more about the state of the ANC in Gauteng that the infighting is vicious, that the contestation and competition is as fierce as ever, and this is not a good sign for the ANC a few months out of the Local Government Election.Chris Steyn (18:27.905)Meanwhile, we've got the voter registration weekend coming up, Wayne.Wayne (18:33.83)So, Chris, I get asked a lot of questions about this by media houses. This is going to be quite a boring weekend for political parties because a lot of people have realised that you can register online and you can check that you register online. Parties have also been prior…all parties have been knocking on doors in their strongholds and getting people to register. So you see very quiet activity.What I'm looking out for this weekend, and again it's another phase in the road to the Local Government Elections, is which parties have posters, which parties have a presence, even though they know that there's going to be very little traffic at the voting stations across South Africa. If a party has a presence at a voting station or a registration weekend, you can be a hundred percent sure they'll have a presence there on election day. So it's a sign as to the level of organisation of the political party and also the level of the organisation of the IEC. Are voting stations gonna open on time? Will they be able to register voters efficiently?And then the other thing which I think is going to be interesting is to gauge the mood of the supporters of various parties and their political strongholds this weekend. But I think it's going to it's more of a milestone than a major, it's more of a box being ticked on the road to the Local Government Elections than a major milestone for political parties, but it's important for the IEC that this weekend goes smoothly.Chris Steyn (20:17.473)Thank you. That was Wayne Sussman, Elections Analyst on The Electoral Road Show, with me, Chris Steyn, for BizNews. Thank you, Wayne.Wayne (20:27.824)Thank you.