Helen Zille’s high-stakes gamble: Can the DA take Johannesburg? - Nicholas Lorimer

Key topicsDA eyes Jo’burg in 2026 as its “Operation Market Garden”Zille may run for mayor to lead metro turnaround pushJohannesburg win seen as key to DA's 2029 national ambitions.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 at 5:30am 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.The auditorium doors will open for BNIC#2 on 10 September 2025 in Hermanus. For more information and tickets, click here..By Nicholas Lorimer.In the closing months of the Second World War in Europe, the Allies were advancing towards Germany, but faced the formidable Siegfried Line of fortifications. British commander, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, proposed a daring plan to capture bridges over the Rhine River and outflank the German defences.The hope was that this would shorten the war and allow the Allies to break deep into Germany by the beginning of 1945.This plan, code-named Operation Market Garden, would involve a high-risk, high-reward plan using airborne troops.Whilst the operation achieved some local successes, it was ultimately a failure. It failed to break through the German defences, and the war in Europe was not shortened. Famously, one book described the plan to capture the three bridges as “a bridge too far”, as the first two were captured, but the third remained out of Allied control.A few months later, the Western Allies and Soviets would divide up Europe between them in a conference at Yalta. Had Market Garden been successful, one wonders what effect it could have had on the Yalta Conference, how many lives of soldiers and civilians could have been saved, and what the shape of Europe would have been after the war.RiskWhile it was a failure, one understands why the risk was taken. Some historians believe that it might even have succeeded, had some small things gone differently. With hindsight it has gone down in history as a huge failure, but had it succeeded, we might have spoken of it as a stroke of tactical genius, with significant ramifications for Europe and the world. This brings us to the DA.Now firmly settled into a very dysfunctional and tense position in the GNU, the DA is drawing up its plans for the next big battle in SA politics, the local government elections.Much like the Germans in 1944, the ANC seems to be in a bad way. Facing the DA on one flank and peeling off more moderate supporters tired of a party which has promised jobs and reform, but failed to deliver both. On the other flank, they are under assault by the populist far-left forces, MK and the EFF, who demand that the ANC abandon reality and become the worst version of itself.With the ANC weakening, the DA is looking to grab as much ground as possible to set itself up for the big battle in 2029, when the party could, if things go well, see itself become the biggest party in the country.The weak point in the ANC’s defences is the metros in Gauteng, particularly Tshwane and Johannesburg. These cities are vital for the health of the DA nationally due to their importance in South Africa. Winning these metros, particularly Johannesburg, and turning them around would show the country the DA can definitively govern a large metro outside the Cape. It would contrast powerfully with the ANC’s mismanagement of Jo’burg, and set the party up with a strong campaign in 2029.A bridge too farHowever, whilst Tshwane seems very winnable, Johannesburg could be a bridge too far.In the last local government elections in 2021, the DA in Tshwane managed 32% of the vote to the ANC’s 35%. ActionSA, whose supporters are often former DA voters, managed around 9%.In the 2024 national and provincial elections, the provincial ballot saw the DA win 31% to the ANC’s 36%: not a bad result, as historically the DA under-performs in national elections whilst the ANC over-performs.Additionally, the DA faced challenges to its core support from the PA, ActionSA, Rise Mzansi, and BOSA. Whilst it lost some votes to these parties, Rise Mzansi, BOSA and ActionSA in particular did not meet expectations, with ActionSA shrinking to 4% in 2024. Rise Mzansi and BOSA together only managed 1.7%.Beyond the percentages, in raw numbers of votes, the DA turned out 301,777 voters on the provincial ballot in 2024, a number which eclipses the ANC’s raw votes in the low turn-out 2021 election, where in Tshwane the ANC got around 234,521 votes. (The DA in 2021 managed only 213 852 votes in Tshwane.)What this tells us is that there is a large body of DA voters who didn’t vote in 2021, but in theory, some of these missing 85,000 DA voters could be brought out to vote by a strong enough campaign. Historically, the ANC has struggled to get its voters to the polls in local elections. With the party consumed by infighting and dogged by governance failures, the ANC could struggle to match its 2021 vote numbers.One can see the path to victory here for the DA. It should boost turnout of core support, win some voters back from ActionSA, Rise, and BOSA, and limit the bleeding to the PA, and then use successes in the GNU to pick off some ANC voters. If ANC voters are depressed and don’t turn out, you can see the DA winning numbers above its 2016 results in Tshwane, where it managed 43% of the vote. Add some seats from the ACDP, FF+, and IFP, and you could have a stable if very slim majority in Council.More trickyJohannesburg is a bit more tricky.In 2021, the ANC won 33% in Jo’burg, and the DA 26%. ActionSA came third with 18%. In 2024 the ANC scored 32% to the DA’s 25%, whilst ActionSA plummeted to 6%. MK did better than many expected, winning 12% of the vote.In raw numbers, the DA won 353,577 provincial votes in 2024, the ANC 452 361. In 2021, these figures were 235,120 PR votes for the DA and 306,902 for the ANC. This gives us about 120,000 potential DA voters in Jo’burg who voted in national but not local elections. On the face of it, that doesn’t seem too bad. Turning out most of those voters and winning some back from ActionSA, Rise, and BOSA seems doable. However, the ground that needs to be made up is much more significant.It also is more difficult to mobilise 120,000 people than 85,000. It means more activists, more money, more time, and more adverts. Furthermore, the DA can’t just be the biggest party. If it wants a stable government, it needs to win enough votes to avoid relying on ActionSA and the PA. This means scoring in the mid- to high 40% of the vote, nearly double its current percentage.Unlike in Tshwane, where the FF+ provide a solid block of seats who might support a DA mayor, in Jo’burg the DA’s closest partners, the FF+ and ACDP, are smaller. Additionally, its other ally, the IFP, may lose seats to a strong challenge from MK. Even if the DA could magically re-absorb every ActionSA voter, (an impossibility) it would still only win around 44% of the vote in Johannesburg.This is the context which we should keep in mind when we consider the announcement that the DA’s Federal Chairman, Helen Zille, is considering running for mayor of Johannesburg.Big prizeRather than a more cautious strategy of trying to win Tshwane, defend against the PA in the Cape and chip away at the ANC across the country, if the DA picks Zille for its Jo’burg candidacy it will show that it has set its sights on the big prize, the ambitious plan rather than the slow grinding war of attrition. Their own Market Garden.The stakes are quite high. Should it fail to win, even if it grows in other places, the party will have to spend a good while explaining how the result is in fact not a disappointment. Indeed, it will spend months battling op-eds which say that the DA continues to fail to “break through” to become the biggest party. Not a great place to be in the lead-up to 2029.However, winning is only half the battle. The DA has run Johannesburg with two previous mayors, Herman Mashaba and Mpho Phalatse, neither of whom was successful in turning around Johannesburg. If the voters hand power in Jo’burg back to the DA, this could be their final chance to show that they can do it.It is for this reason that the party should seriously consider Zille. Whilst she is a polarising figure and is now 74, at the end of a long and incredible career, she has very specific relevant experience from her time as mayor of Cape Town (2006-2009) and her time as Premier of the Western Cape (2009-2019).Little timeThere won’t be time for even a skilled new candidate to learn on the job. The DA will need to begin showing progress very quickly if it hopes to benefit from winning the city.Zille has the relevant governing experience to begin managing the city on day one. If she builds a good team with some talented MMCs and staffers, she could also leave behind a strong DA administration which could run the city long after she retires.A DA victory in Joburg is a long shot. In 2029 we could look back on the attempt as an ambitious and poorly thought-out failure, much as Market Garden is considered today. However, if the DA can pull it off, it might be remembered as the great tactical move that changed the party’s fortunes. .*This article was first published by Daily Friend and is republished with permission

Helen Zille’s high-stakes gamble: Can the DA take Johannesburg? - Nicholas Lorimer

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