DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis has unveiled a new strategy aimed at winning millions of undecided voters,arguing that South Africa must move from a system of “subjects” to one of empowered citizens.
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DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis unveiled a plan targeting 6 million undecided voters,urging a shift from ANC-centric strategies.Hill-Lewis criticised the ANC’s dominance,likening it to “permanent one-party rule” that undermines citizens’ rights.His address,attended by DA leaders and industry figures,aimed to inspire disillusioned voters with a vision for a better South Africa.Nearly three months after he was elected as DA leader,Geordin Hill-Lewis has presented his latest plan to target about 6 million undecided voters.
Hill-Lewis laid out the plan,“Subject to Citizen”,to a packed auditorium on Thursday in Sandton,where he said his own party’s strategy often responds to what the ANC was doing,and this must change because,30 years on,the ANC was no longer the sun around which everyone and everything orbits.
“Our Constitution had promised to turn subjects into citizens. What emerged instead was a new form of subjecthood: access to opportunity depended on one’s relationship to those in power,not on one’s rights as a citizen,” Hill-Lewis said.
He quoted Ugandan scholar Mahmood Mamdani,who said apartheid was built on a distinction between citizens and subjects,and this denied black South Africans full and equal citizenship,incorporated into the state not as participants with rights,but ruled by a power they could neither control nor remove.
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“Mamdani had described that condition in the early ’90s. Thirty years after liberation,it is still the most accurate description of South Africa,” Hill-Lewis said.
What does the future hold for South Africans? 🤔
DA Leader Geordin Hill-Lewis sets out a vision for South Africa's future and the road to a government that delivers for every citizen. 🇿🇦💙 pic.twitter.com/WAAaspuyEr
— Democratic Alliance (@Our_DA) July 2,2026
He said this was allowed to happen “because for the last three decades everyone – and I mean everyone – assumed the party in power would govern forever,that it was the sun around which everything orbited.”
Hill-Lewis added:
The assumption of its own permanence – grounded in the moral legitimacy it had earned in the struggle – allowed the party to govern badly without consequence,to capture institutions without fear of accountability,and to treat people as subjects.
He said the media and the commentariat largely bought into the idea of permanent one-party dominance.
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“The primary news story of South African politics,for thirty years,has been the internal factionalism of the ANC – which faction is up,which is down and who will succeed whom.
“The party was so thoroughly assumed to be the permanent centre of gravity that the dominant political journalism of our era was essentially palace reporting,” he said,adding that the subject,watching from outside the palace gates,was barely featured.
READ | Carol Paton: Can the radical liberalism of Geordin Hill-Lewis win the DA black votes?
“Even the opposition – including the DA – was drawn into the ANC’s gravitational field. Every strategy and electoral calculation was built in relation to the governing party as the permanent fixed point of South African politics,” Hill-Lewis said.
This was Hill-Lewis’ first major address since he won unopposed in April,and he did not hold back. Though most of Hill-Lewis’ plan was not new,his delivery and authenticity could garner a different response.
The room was packed with DA leaders serving in government,caucus leaders,members of Parliament,and some captains of industry,including Antony Ball.
READ | Interview: Geordin Hill-Lewis on the ANC,firing Steenhuisen and evolving as a leader
The last time the DA genuinely leaned into the subject of race and white privilege was in 2018 under Mmusi Maimane’s leadership,and his remarks resulted in a backlash,and those who opposed it argued that the rhetoric alienated traditional voters and veered too close to ANC race-based politics.
Speaking to News24 on the sidelines of the event,Hill-Lewis said he was pitching mainly to the 6 million South Africans who no longer vote for the ANC and are looking for a vision of how South Africa can be better,and for a party that is genuinely for them.
“We’ve made tragedy and catastrophe almost normal in South Africa and that has to end,a lot of those people live here in Gauteng,by the way,if you look geographically where are those 6 million people that no longer vote for the ANC or have given up on them many of them are here in this province,which is why November is so important,” Hill-Lewis said.
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