John Matisonn: Dramatic DA surge in Jo’burg, Tshwane and even eThekwini

Key topics:DA poised for possible metro majorities, especially in Tshwane and JoburgANC support collapses in eThekwini, opening space for DA-IFP alliancesDA more likely to partner with ANC than ActionSA amid local party infighting.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..By John Matisonn.A new opinion poll shows the main metros tilting far enough towards the Democratic Alliance for the DA to eye establish stable, two or three-party coalition governments in Johannesburg, Tshwane and even, perhaps, in eThekwini. Polling and party dynamics also lean towards DA alliances with the ANC rather than Herman Mashaba’s ActionSouth Africa, which is making itself increasingly unpopular in the DA while making too little impact on voters to require their attention.“Helen Zille will not even in the next lifetime become mayor of the city of Johannesburg,” Mashaba told the Biznews conference in Hermanus firmly last week.The DA’s rise has been sufficiently noteworthy that an unexpected possibility has arisen that it may even meet the magical figure of 50% plus one so that it can govern one or more metros alone. The best chance of that is currently in Tshwane, where the DA sits at 44%, with Johannesburg not too far behind at 39%..Read more:.Richard Wilkinson: The importance of winning outright majorities in the Gauteng metros.In Johannesburg, where former Cape Town mayor Helen Zille’s campaign has dominated media coverage, DA support at 39% represents a 50% increase since the general election less than two years ago.The two coalition partners that might be big enough to get over the 50% threshold are the ANC with 30% and the ActionSA with 10%. The Mkontho weSizwe Party is in fourth place with 8%. The poll was conducted by the Social Research Foundation and published by The Common Sense’s Dr Frans Cronje, who stressed that it represents a snapshot of opinion at the time of polling rather than a prediction of conditions on election day. In eThekwini, the poll shows ANC support has collapsed from dominance in 2021 down to a mere 8%, a distant fourth. Here the polling result closely mirrors the outcome in the KwaZulu-Natal province in 2024, where the MKP won 44.5% of the vote, but was kept out of government by an alliance between the Inkatha Freedom Party, the ANC and DA. In the past the ANC has never won less than 40% in eThekwini, peaking at 60% in 2011. If the poll numbers in this survey were to hold in the election, the DA would be the second biggest party with 28%, followed by the IFP at 18% and the ANC down to 8%. If these three parties came together they could govern, keeping out the MKP. If these polls hold and the three parties chose to govern together, the DA would be the biggest, entitled to claim to the mayoralty.While Zille and Mashaba, ActionSA’s candidate for Johannesburg mayor, are out campaigning, the ANC and its incumbent mayor of the city, Dada Morero, are locked in internal battles over leadership of the party in the city. Morero was recently voted out as the head of the ANC in Johannesburg, which has pitted the local party against the ANC head office, which wants Morero to remain mayor until the election, which is expected at the end of this year. The ANC’s regional executive committee wants to recall Morero as mayor. ANC infighting has made it easier for Zille and the DA to target its campaign against the ANC’s controversial Gauteng premier, Panyaza Lesufi, adding more billboards around the city highlighting a gaffe when he suggested he was also a victim of service delivery failures by saying he checked in to a hotel to shower when water failed at home. Lesufi’s provincial government also remains distressed in an unstable coalition with the more radical MKP and the Economic Freedom Fighters, who both recently threatened to topple his government. It is still not certain that the ANC will be able to pass the budget tabled by Finance MEC Lebogang Maile..Read more:.John Matisonn: DA mayors in all metros? – latest poll.The ANC at national level favours a break with these parties to ally with the DA. One reason ANC leaders favour the idea is that they feel they are in more direct competition with the MKP and EFF for the same voting pool.

John Matisonn: Dramatic DA surge in Jo’burg, Tshwane and even eThekwini

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