Solly Msimanga, Gauteng DA leader and MPL, says if he is elected as the party’s federal council chair, he will prioritise rebuilding grassroots structures that collapsed during the mass exodus of black leaders from the party, particularly in Gauteng, South Africa’s economic and financial hub.
“Our structures collapsed in Gauteng in 2019. Remember, Mmusi Maimane came from Gauteng, Herman Mashaba came from Gauteng, and John Moodey came from Gauteng,” Msimanga told Business Day on the sidelines of the DA federal congress at Gallagher Convention Centre in Midrand on Saturday.
“Later, Makashule Gana left; Khume Ramulifho left. These are the people who helped to build structures, and when they left, those structures collapsed. But we have been able to rebuild those structures; that’s what we want to do for the party at the national level to build structures that will be able to contest and win [elections].”
The DA lost several senior leaders over the years who accused the party of not prioritising transformation, among other grievances.
Former DA MP Patricia Kopane resigned in 2022 after two decades in the DA, saying the party no longer served her political interests and it had become a “white” party. She joined ActionSA, which was founded by former Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba, who quit the DA in 2019, having served only three years of his five-year term as DA mayor from 2016.
In March 2023, DA policy chief Gwen Ngwenya resigned a week before the DA was due to hold its federal congress in Midrand, saying she had accepted a role to lead Airbnb’s policy and legislative activities in the Middle East and Africa.
Other leaders who have left include former KwaZulu-Natal MPL Mbali Ntuli; former MP Phumzile van Damme; former party leaders Maimane and Lindiwe Mazibuko; former Gauteng leader Moodey; former Midvaal mayor Bongani Baloyi; former Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille, who is now leader of the GOOD party; and former Nelson Mandela Bay mayor Athol Trollip, who is now ActionSA’s Eastern Cape chair and MP.
“We don’t want to build structures for the sake of contesting elections,” Msimanga said. “We want to build structures that will be the champions of service delivery and the issues that people care about in communities.”
Now that the DA is in government at the national level through the government of national unity, Msimanga said there was a change in attitude. “Even with the policies that will be adopted here [at the congress], we are no longer talking about the opposition but about what we are doing in government and how we want to see the DA being projected [in the future].
“We are here to affirm what we want to do in the 2026 local government elections and the sort of manifesto we want to put out there. This is the theme that will take the DA to 2029.”
The congress has been described by analysts as the handing over of power from the old guard to young party leaders. “The guys that came before us have done what needed to be done to get us where we are. It is up to the younger generation to say, ‘How do we then transcend to what, I say, should be the biggest party in SA?’
“The ANC is losing its majority and support at an alarming rate, but the DA is not increasing at that same rate. Why is that? We must respond to that. When we do, we will be able to come up with programmes that will get the DA to where it needs to go.
“The DA is growing to become the biggest party in South Africa. But we are not growing in the rural areas, and this is why I’m standing as the chairperson of the federal council, to go on the ground and win that support.”
Business Day
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