DA leader Mmusi Maimane has acknowledged that his party has made mistakes, but says scandals such as the Life Esidimeni tragedy, in which more than 140 psychiatric patients died, and state capture would not happen under his party’s rule.
This specific line in Maimane’s address on Saturday at the DA’s manifesto launch in Johannesburg highlighted the party’s underlying message that it was not the same as the ANC and that where it governed, it did it better.
The DA has positioned itself as an alternative government that runs three of the country’s eight metros, either in coalition such as in Tshwane and Johannesburg, or with a full-out majority as in Cape Town.
But the past year has been a difficult one for the party.
In 2018 it was embroiled in a bitter fight with its former mayor of Cape Town, Patricia de Lille, it lost the Nelson Mandela Bay metro and faced internal battles over policy decisions.
In the 2019 general elections it has set its eye on the premierships in Gauteng, the Northern Cape and growing its support in the Western Cape.
Former DA leader Helen Zille managed to grow it from 16.7% in the 2009 general elections to 22.23% in 2014 and the pressure is now on Maimane to continue to increase the party’s share of the vote.
In a bid to get its hands on Gauteng, former Tshwane mayor and the party’s premier candidate, Solly Msimanga, was pulled out of the metro to focus on the DA’s campaign.
The Gauteng ANC is especially vulnerable, given that it has only 54% of the support, and took a major knock in 2016, when it lost Tshwane and Johannesburg, and narrowly hung on to Ekurhuleni through a coalition.
Msimanga said the DA’s internal polling showed that the ANC was polling below 50% in Gauteng, but declined to give a specific number.
He said the DA had not ruled out the possibility of a coalition government.
Maimane on Saturday placed emphasis on jobs, growing the economy and fighting corruption.