DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE LEADER CALLS FOR ACCOUNTABILITY-CENTRED GOVERNANCE AS SOUTH AFRICA’S SECOND TRANSITION BEGINS
DA Leader Geordin Hill-Lewis delivered a sweeping indictment of three decades of post-apartheid governance in Sandton, framing South Africa’s political moment as a structural accountability failure and calling for a fundamental reorientation of state power toward citizens rather than party interests.
Hill-Lewis argued that liberation movements, built to seize power from illegitimate states, are structurally unsuited to govern free citizens. The result, he said, has been a state captured by patronage systems, cadre deployment, and factional interests, organised around the needs of the governing party rather than the rights of ordinary people.
The accountability failure, he contended, has deep roots. The apartheid system was built on a distinction between citizens and subjects. The 1994 Constitution promised to end that distinction, but the task of delivering on that promise was entrusted to an organisation designed for a fundamentally different purpose. In practice, access to opportunity came to depend on proximity to those in power rather than on constitutionally guaranteed rights.
Hill-Lewis cited specific policy outcomes as evidence of this governance failure. Black Economic Empowerment, conceived to address the economic exclusion of the black majority, instead allocated wealth narrowly through the party to the politically connected. When BEE was introduced in 2003, unemployment among black South Africans stood at 32 percent. By early 2026, it had grown to 36 percent. Public works programmes, he argued, functioned as patronage levers recycling party loyalists through temporary contracts rather than creating genuine employment. In education, the protection of the South African Democratic Teachers Union was prioritised over classroom outcomes, leaving 81 percent of grade four learners unable to read for meaning.
These outcomes, Hill-Lewis said, were made possible by the assumption of permanent one-party dominance. That assumption allowed the governing party to operate without fear of accountability, to capture institutions, and to treat citizens as subjects. The assumption has now collapsed. In 2024, for the first time, a majority of South Africans did not vote for the ANC. Current polling places the ANC below 50 percent across all demographics, and Hill-Lewis noted that even among black South Africans alone, the ANC would no longer secure a majority.
What changed, in his framing, is the accountability environment itself.
Hill-Lewis outlined five pillars for what he termed a citizen-centred South Africa. The first is a state that belongs to the people rather than to any party, measured by whether schools function, clinics work, trains run, crimes are investigated, and electricity stays on. The second is an economy driven by the choices of free people rather than state direction and licensing, with government limited to infrastructure, law and order, education, healthcare, and social safety nets. The third is an education system organised around every child’s potential rather than union interests. The fourth is a criminal justice system that protects law-abiding citizens and ensures consequences for criminals. The fifth is a social welfare system that builds agency and creates pathways out of poverty rather than managing permanent dependency.
On the DA’s participation in the Government of National Unity alongside the ANC, Hill-Lewis defended the arrangement as necessary to prevent destructive populists from gaining power. He signalled, though, that the DA would no longer remain silent when the ANC refuses to consult or compromise, particularly on economic policy covering business licensing, industrial strategy, and the review of Black Economic Empowerment. The ANC, he said, did not win a mandate to govern as it always has, but rather to negotiate, compromise, and share decision-making.
Hill-Lewis acknowledged that many black South Africans approve of the DA’s governance record but remain hesitant to vote for the party. He committed to building a citizen-centred party in which every person feels welcome regardless of background, skin colour, or language. The DA aims to become the largest party in South Africa and to lead a future coalition government at national level, he said, but only if it governs well for everyone, is present in every community, holds itself and coalition partners to account, and believes in the capacity of South Africans to take control of their own lives.
The speech lands at a moment when the ANC’s institutional grip is visibly loosening. Hill-Lewis framed the stakes in direct terms: unemployment, inequality, violent crime, municipal bankruptcy, educational failure, and healthcare collapse cannot continue to be treated as normal. Whether the Government of National Unity’s internal tensions over economic policy will produce genuine compromise or a more open confrontation between its partners is the question South African governance now faces.