For your children, vote against the DA in 2026 | Long read

At first glance, this may seem like a ridiculous article. The Democratic Alliance (DA) is widely presented as the party “saving” South Africa, and as being “better than the alternatives.”

For someone who voted DA for 15 years, writing this is not done lightly. However, the DA of 2025 is different from the DA of 2010. Either the party has fundamentally changed over time, or these shifts were always going to happen.

This article is written out of concern for our children and grandchildren. The DA’s current trajectory is irresponsible and, if it continues, will ultimately do more harm then good. It looks to me as though we are pawns in their quest for power.

Here are five reasons to vote against the DA in 2026 and for the foreseeable future. Please also consider signing this petition by clicking HERE.

The DA is becoming the ANC

The Democratic Alliance (DA) is increasingly drifting toward becoming an “ANC-lite” party. Why do I say this? Here are two reasons.

Absorbing ANC leaders

In 2025 Helen Zille welcomed four former ANC leaders into the DA, including ex–provincial secretary Neville Delport. These defections form part of a wider pattern of ANC and EFF cadres crossing to the DA. In fact at least 35 defections into the DA occurred in 2025, seven involving senior officials. Notable cases include former ANC Cape Town caucus leader Banele Majingo, and several EFF councillors.

The ANC has dismissed defectors as “sleepers,” despite its own leadership reshuffles and internal problems. Both the ANC and EFF have declined steadily in the province, together winning no more than a quarter of the vote in the last election, a trend unlikely to reverse given the ANC’s ongoing organisational difficulties.

Party members will only cross for good reasons. However none of the recent ANC comrades who have moved into the DA have publicly criticised ANC policy, including land expropriation. Instead, they claim efficiency or racial considerations. Delport for example spoke of limited opportunities for Coloured leaders in the ANC, while others claim the DA shares the ANC’s commitment to so-called “redress” and “redistribution.”

This is concerning for most DA voters who sense that ANC recruits are a liability. Some say that these ANC leaders will boost black support for the DA. This makes no sense because only about 4% of black voters support the DA nationally, closer to 1% in the Cape, by the DA’s own figures. The party now avoids some black areas in Cape Town because campaigning there raises turnout for the ANC and EFF.

Zille’s triangle analysis

While ANC defections are obvious, more concerning are statements by Helen Zille, Federal Chair of the DA. In a 2022 BizNews conference, she outlined a plan to align the DA with a certain faction of the ANC. Her strategy is rooted in her political triangle analysis: the ANC is a dominant but fractured party, with a small faction apparently committed to the rule of law. Zille proposes that the DA position itself as the home of constitutionalist values and gradually attract the so-called reform-minded ANC members.

While this sounds clever, in reality it will most likely backfire. ANC defectors will join the DA for personal gain (money and power), while principled DA leaders will be side-lined or pushed out (such as JP Smith). Over time, the DA will effectively transform into a mirror of the ANC, adopting its trajectory toward state control, socialism, NRD, and land expropriation. Meanwhile, the party’s PR efforts will continue to reassure voters, but its support may erode once older voters pass away, leaving a DA hollowed out and dominated by former ANC cadres.

The DA is becoming the ANC and this is the first reasons to vote against them in 2026 and for the foreseeable future. If you would like to learn more about the merger of the DA read DA-ANC: The creeping fusion and The elite’s 12-year plan to merge the DA and ANC, and how it went wrong.

What kind of a future will your children have under such DA leadership?

The DA want a centrally controlled economy

The Democratic Alliance’s recent proposal to replace BEE with a UN-aligned SDG framework illustrate a preference for state-directed economic management under the guise of “centrist” policy. While the party criticizes BEE for elite capture and racial rigidity, its alternative imposes even more complex compliance requirements on businesses, tying public procurement to gender, disability, social development, and environmental metrics. All the woke stuff. They have lost their marbles!

By codifying the UN Sustainable Development Goals into law, the DA effectively mandates private companies to implement socially engineered objectives (who else tried social engineering and how did that go?), creating an expansive bureaucratic apparatus and fostering dependence on international consultants and NGOs. Despite its rhetoric of equality of opportunity, the policy continues to prioritize redistribution through state-enforced planning, expanding the scope of government intervention into the private sector rather than reducing it.

In practice, the DA could dismantle BEE immediately by prioritizing value-for-money in state procurement, as affirmed by the 2022 Constitutional Court ruling in Sakeliga v Minister of Finance. Yet they choose not to, preferring to enforce an even broader set of SDG requirements on all firms seeking state contracts.

This approach entrenches centralised control over the economy, disproportionately burdens SMEs, and channels resources through politically and ideologically aligned actors. Cape Town’s experience under the DA illustrates the consequences. Soaring property prices, concentrated wealth, and an economy heavily reliant on temporary or rent-seeking sectors, all while appearing progressive.

The party’s “centrist” vision is a model of bureaucratically managed economic intervention, blending so-called “social justice” goals with heavy-handed planning and perpetuating a cycle of dependence on the state and its allies.

What kind of a future will your children have under such DA leadership?

The DA are unethically densifying Cape Town

The City of Cape Town, under the Democratic Alliance (DA), is pursuing a strategy of urban densification with wide-reaching implications for the city’s spatial form.

The City Council, which functions as both the legislative and executive authority, is inherently political and dominated by the DA, which currently holds 134 of 231 seats. Through its majority control, the DA shapes the Council’s decisions, from budget approvals to strategic planning.

Central to this process is the Integrated Development Plan (IDP), the City’s legally mandated five-year blueprint, which guides resource allocation, municipal policies, and the Municipal Spatial Development Framework (MSDF). The 2022–2027 IDP explicitly prioritizes densification, framing compact growth as the primary urban development model and positioning higher-density housing as central to the city’s future.

By driving this densification agenda through the IDP and MSDF, the DA exerts direct political influence on Cape Town’s long-term urban form. While the Council is formally distinct from the party, its DA majority ensures that spatial planning decisions align with the party’s policy priorities.

The IDP’s emphasis on intensifying the urban core and structurally increasing density is not a neutral administrative measure but a politically driven strategy.

This densification is ethically questionable and risks significant negative consequences for future generations, from overburdened infrastructure to reduced liveability. The DA’s fingerprints are therefore on the densification of Cape Town, making it a central and foolish feature of the city’s policy trajectory.

What kind of a future will your children have under such DA leadership?

Will the DA become irrelevant?

What is the future of South Africa? Who are the future leaders? We are fortunate because we have a preview, and that is in our universities. South Africa’s universities, such as the University of Cape Town (UCT), offer a snapshot of the country, a window into its undercurrents and its future. There are many reasons for this, but the most compelling is that UCT graduates go on to hold leadership positions throughout South Africa. UCT leaders today are South Africa’s leaders tomorrow.

The best way to understand the heads of future leaders is through the Student Representative Council (SRC). The reason is that the SRC is the highest decision-making structure of student governance at UCT. As a central stakeholder within the university, it represents the interests of all students across various committees, influencing policy and participating in cooperative decision-making.

Whoever leads the SRC gives an idea of where the student body is heading because they are being voted in by the students. Here are the results of the SRC elections from the past several years.

• 2017/18: EFFSC (EFF)
• 2018/19: EFFSC (EFF)
• 2019/20: EFFSC (EFF)
• 2022/23: Independents
• 2023/24: EFFSC (EFF)
• 2024/25: EFFSC (EFF)
• 2025/26: SASCO (ANC)

Now only about 30% of UCT students vote, and within this group, the DA is nowhere near leadership. This raises the question of what the remaining 70% think. While some may support the DA, why then did the apparently large DA voter base among the next generation not turn out? Given that a 30% voter turnout is fairly typical in South Africa, we can reasonably expect similar voting patterns as these students grow older. And what guarantees that they will change their minds? While some university students may shift their views after leaving, it seems unlikely that there will be significant change.

Voting patterns at our universities, including UCT, suggest that the DA likely has little to no future and risks becoming irrelevant, unless it transforms into something like the ANC. Even then, it is uncertain whether it would attract votes from the next generation. Perhaps this is why the DA seems to be cozying up to the ANC.

Most universities are following UCT’s trend, with the exception of UPE, where the contest remains close. In this context, moving away from the DA and supporting another party seems the most sensible course of action.

DA leadership have the “Anointed Vision”

In his book The Vision of the Anointed, Thomas Sowell describes a widely held vision embraced by many politicians, intellectuals, and media figures not only in the USA, but also in South Africa.

He refers to it as the ”anointed vision” because those who embrace this mindset see themselves as messianic figures. Consciously or unconsciously, they believe that they have a superior grasp of society’s problems and are uniquely equipped to fix them.

Thomas Sowell argues that the anointed advance their agenda through speech marked by crisis, manufacturing a sense of urgency, calling for government intervention through so-called “justice”, and discrediting others as misinformed.

He sees their approach as rooted in pride, rather than genuine concern. He says that the anointed regularly ignore contrary evidence and undermine social cohesion. According to Sowell, the anointed are not simply misguided idealists, but individuals who love their own perceived virtue. It is for these reasons that the anointed are destructive in their leadership.

Considering Sowell’s book, I want us to now observe how DA leadership ignores contrary evidence by using the “misinformation” claim and using crisis language to justify more government involvement.

In a February 2025 media briefing, John Steenhuizen accused Piet Le Roux of spearheading “a public campaign of misinformation and distortion,” insisting that allegations of his role in creating “AgriBEE” and transformation funds were false. By labeling Le Roux’s claims as falsehoods, he frames his own narrative as the only credible one. Steenhuizen ignores contrary evidence.

In a May 2021 article Phumzile Van Damme expressed her desire to engage Facebook on the steps the tech giant would take to address harmful misinformation, particularly in the lead-up to the 2021 local government elections. She noted that Facebook often develops country-specific measures ahead of elections to guard against misinformation and said the DA wanted to see similar steps taken in South Africa.

In a 2021 briefing, senior DA figures repeatedly framed misinformation as a central risk requiring active management by the state. Western Cape Premier Alan Winde argued that there is no “one size fits all” approach to combating vaccine misinformation, emphasising the need for flexible, targeted communication strategies tailored to different communities and platforms.

I could write much more on this topic, but you understand the point. DA leaders often dismiss evidence that contradicts their position as “misinformation” or accuse the messenger of being political or fear-mongering. This is typical of those who see themselves as anointed, and, as Sowell warns, we should be very cautious of such a mindset because of the harm it can cause.

I could talk about how the DA is going woke or how the DA-led City Council tried to directly expropriate private property near Fish Hoek in 2018 or how they are breaking Cape Town’s schools.

The bottom line is that the DA of 2025 is different from the DA of 2010. Either the party has fundamentally changed over time, or these shifts were always going to happen. These activities of the party are going to send Cape Town down the tubes. This will be Cape Town’s undoing. We are witnessing the “Joburgification” of Cape Town and this will be disastrous for your children’s future. You have a moral responsibility to act. In 2026 and for the foreseeable future, vote against the DA. Who do I then vote for? You will have to do some research, but there are good alternatives. Please also consider signing this petition by clicking HERE.