Pushback against DA is looming after election gains

DA mayoral candidate Helen Zille at the National Results Operation Centre (ROC) in Johannesburg, 5 November 2026, monitoring the results process for the 2026 Local Government elections. Picture: Nigel Sibanda/The Citizen

Has our glorious National Democratic Revolution, like many others across world before it, lost its way?

That’s a question to be considered against the background of election reverses for the ANC, coupled with solid and improved showings from both the DA and ActionSA.

Despite what many right-wingers in this country believe – and whose feelings are shared by US President Donald Trump and his acolytes – the ANC is, in reality, anything but a revolutionary movement.

Despite its parroting of socialist and left-wing slogans, it is not on the road to communism.

What has evolved in this country since 1994 is what critics of the ANC and its tripartite alliance partners claim is neocolonialism, where the leaders of the revolution have been seduced by the lure of money and have been co-opted into moving in the direction of capitalism, via corruption.

Despite that, though, the ANC likes to wrap its cloak of ideological progressiveness around itself as a shield against reality.

And, recently, it has been joined by others proclaiming they are leftists who want to radically transformation society in the name of “the people”.

Radical economic transformation was the mantra of former president Jacob Zuma, carried over into his uMkhonto weSizwe party – and has been appropriated, too, by the EFF.

Judging by the results of the elections, the appeal of true socialism is either waning, or voters don’t believe the bulldust. We would guess more of the latter…

Still, now that the comrades have been pushed into a corner by the DA particularly, they might feel compelled to band together in “progressive” alliances to exclude the blue party from influence in as many municipalities as possible.

Given the enmity of Herman Mashaba for the DA, the progressives might find a willing partner in ActionSA. Pushback against the DA could be looming.

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