Political parties operate like cults; you, as an individual, give your undying love and support to an entity that operates on your behalf. You sign your thinking away and in turn it is their job to have one unified message and expression.
All parties operate like this: the ANC has the comrades, the EFF has the fighters and the DA has the smurfs. I define smurfs as DA members or supporters who see no fault in the party, to the point where they blindly defend it at all costs. This results in them having no original opinion other than the ones sent to them via press statements and message scripts.
Unlike the comrades and the fighters, smurfs have a particular pedigree. They all went to the DA’s school of communication, and as a result operate on a specialised brand of story spinning. While it is the nature of political parties and cults alike to project a positive outlook, avoid criticism and never admit wrongdoing, it comes at a cost.
Beneath the careful wording there is an undeniable truth: the DA is not growing.
Their recent performances were:
- In 2014 the DA received 4,091,584 votes nationally, which translated to 22.23% of the vote.
- In 2019 that number dropped to 3,622,531 votes, or 20.77%.
- In 2024 the party received 3,505,735 votes, with a marginal increase in percentage to 21.81%.
That means between 2014 and 2019 the DA lost 469,053 votes, and between 2019 and 2024 it lost a further 116,796 votes. Over a decade the party has lost a total of 585,849 voters in absolute terms. In real terms — the proportion of voters choosing the DA — the trajectory is stagnant at best and declining at worst.
The smurf answer is to say the DA’s decline is simply a function of a shrinking electorate. That argument is convenient, but it does not hold. Turnout fell from 73.5% in 2014 to 66% in 2019 and 58.6% in 2024, with about 16.3-million of about 27.8-million registered voters casting ballots, meaning more than 11-million stayed home.
Even with that decline the DA lost nearly 600,000 voters over 10 years. That is not just turnout. The electorate not only shrunk, it shifted and fragmented, creating space the DA did not capture or grow into. Strip away the percentages and the pattern is clear. The DA has not expanded its base or broken through in a country that has fundamentally changed since 2014.
Then there is the point smurfs avoid like the plague. In 2024 the ANC lost its outright majority for the first time since 1994 and was forced into coalition politics, falling to just over 40%. This was the clearest electoral opening yet in democratic South Africa. The dominant party weakened, voters shifted, and the political centre fractured. Yet the DA, after more than 20 years as the official opposition, did not meaningfully grow or capture that moment. This is the real issue.
For more than two decades, voters have had the option to replace the ANC with the DA and they have not done so. That reflects the DA’s limits, its inability to broaden its appeal, and its failure to persuade beyond its core base. That is the point. The DA is not failing because it lacks opportunity. It is failing because it cannot respond to it.
This is new leader Geordin Hill-Lewis’s real challenge, because the problem is not only strategy or messaging. It is the ecosystem around him. The smurfs who insist everything is working, who treat critique as attack, and who reframe every loss as a win.
You cannot correct course if no-one admits you are off course. You cannot grow if your loudest voices insist nothing is wrong. You cannot build a national majority if your internal culture rewards loyalty over honesty.
If Hill-Lewis wants to grow the DA he doesn’t need better slogans or sharper press statements. He needs fewer smurfs.
• Roos is Business Day parliamentary reporter.
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