4%: The number the DA and Gareth van Onselen are afraid of

The latter statistic is never mentioned, and Gareth van Onselen’s reports never include it. But it can easily be calculated from the numbers he does supply: only 4.3% of black votes go to the DA.

This figure exposes a divide between the DA’s self-image as South Africa’s “most diverse” political party and its failure to reflect the nation’s racial composition. The DA’s voter base (58.6% white, 21.5% coloured, 7.7% Indian, and 14% black) makes it diverse by default, but given South Africa’s racial distribution, it is nowhere near representative of a country where blacks constitute 80.9% of the electorate.

The DA’s 21.8% national vote share (3.56 million votes) in 2024, with roughly half a million black votes, shows its limited appeal. Black voters, casting 11 million ballots at 55.2% turnout, overwhelmingly supported the ANC and its splinter parties (MK, EFF and others), which together command nearly two-thirds of the National Assembly (ANC 40.2%, 159 seats; EFF 9.5%, 39 seats; MK 14.6%), just as it has for the past 30 years.

Voting patterns have barely budged: in 1994, when the NP-led bloc held ~22% and the ANC-led majoritarian front ~63%. The DA, despite its ambitions, has largely just absorbed the old NP constituency alongside a little pinch of like-minded black liberal allies. The racial divide is as adamantine as it ever was.

The infamous 2019 DA review by Ryan Coetzee, Tony Leon, and Michiel le Roux noted stagnant black support in more honest terms: 0.8% in 2009, peaking at 5.9% in 2016, and 4.0% in 2019. But since then the DA have learned to shut up about it, since their ambitions with a divided ANC have risen to include the national executive, and with support barely shifting to 4.3% in 2024, they retain a decidedly limited mandate.

But this has implications beyond the criticism of the DA itself. Their rose-tinted rainbow-nation messaging, articulated in its manifesto, speeches and public statements, envisions a non-racial and united South Africa. Yet, the 4% black vote share, fluctuating only marginally over the years, reveals a stubborn reality: black voters remain wary of voting for any party that isn’t hostile to minority interests, even minority rights.

The ANC and its offshoots exploit this, framing the DA as antithetical to “transformation” (which their voters certainly are, with good reason). With minorities shrinking, the DA’s reliance on the captured supermajority of the minority bloc (75% roughly) limits its growth in a black-majority nation, and makes their continued survival dependent on black voter apathy. This has been demonstrated in their admitted strategy of avoiding campaigning in certain areas, since their presence usually drives up black voter participation, but they turn out rather for the ANC and EFF.

Looking at the numbers, it’s not hard to see how this works – in the 2024 election, about 65-70% of black adults registered to vote, with 55.2% of them turning out. For whites, roughly 85-90% registered, and 74.6% voted. About 75-80% of coloured adults registered, with 57.9% voting. For Indians, around 70-75% registered, and 61.5% voted. That means the effective voting rate as a percentage of the voting age population is as follows: black: 36-39%, white: 64-67%, coloured: 43-46%, Indian/Asian: 43-46%. 

The DA’s silence on the 4% stat reflects an uncomfortable reality: its rainbow-nation vision is undermined by black voters’ persistent rejection of any party seen to champion minority rights. For the DA to change this, they would have to reflect the desires and race-based leadership preferences of the majority, which would alienate the minority base they require to survive crossing that transition in the first place, a truth Leon and Coetzee enunciated in no uncertain terms following the debacle of Maimane, who drove 3% of the minority vote over to the VF+.

Ultimately this means that South Africa is the ANC, whether we like it or not, and if the grand old party dies, it will live on in the hearts of the average man and woman, and breathe again through new skin in the form of other political organisations.

The only way to achieve any form of government which regards us as fully worthy of citizenship would be to partition the country, and assure that minority votes carry the day in some new territory – whether in the form of the Cape, or as self-governing Afrikaner enclaves.

If we keep going as we are, all we are doing is tying up the minorities to feed to the ANC, in whatever skin it wears in the future.