The Democratic Alliance (DA) has elected Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis as its leader on Sunday, as the ruling coalition's second-biggest party sought to capitalise on discontent to expand its power base in local polls this year. 

The 39-year-old was widely considered the favourite to succeed Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen, who has led the pro-business party since 2019 and is stepping down. 

"If we work hard, we can win more towns and cities than we've ever won before," Hill-Lewis said in his acceptance speech at a party conference near Johannesburg, while laying out broad ambitions for the next national election in 2029.

"I am not satisfied being a junior partner in a coalition government. Our ambition must be to lead the national government," he said.

Hill-Lewis has given few details about his plans but is not expected to depart significantly from the policies of his predecessor, who took the DA into a coalition with the African National Congress (ANC) in 2024 while continuing to fight it on issues such as national health insurance and affirmative action, which the DA opposes.

Africa's most industrialised country must hold local elections before November, and President Cyril Ramaphosa's ANC is expected to see its share of the vote slip again.

Local polls have traditionally gone worse for the ANC than the national vote, as voters furious at failures to deliver basic services like water and road repairs punish the party that has been in power since apartheid ended in 1994.

DA STRUGGLES TO SHED REPUTATION AS WHITE PARTY

The DA holds 22% of seats in the lower house of parliament, second to the ANC with 41%, and has kept roughly the same vote share for the last decade.

The DA has a reputation for protecting the interests of South Africa's white minority - which it denies - and has not had a non-white leader since Mmusi Maimane resigned in 2019. Some analysts see that as a limiting factor for growth in a country that is more than 90% non-white.

"It would've been so much easier for them to appeal to a broader constituency if there was a dynamic person ... of another colour," author and political scientist Susan Booysen said.