Helen Zille on the ANC polling below 40%

Sunday’s cracking headline in Rapport, “ANC falls below 40%” is the result of the ANC’s own polling, chair of the DA Federal Executive and former party leader Helen Zille reminds Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge. Indeed, Rapport appears to have seen two polls, an internal ANC one warning of a “freefall” in electoral support ahead of the 2024 elections and a “confidential” poll putting the ruling party at 38 per cent on a 56 per cent turnout if the elections were held today. That same confidential poll puts the DA at 27 per cent, which Zille says she thinks is somewhat ambitious.

But, she says, the party is doing well among black voters despite recent losses of black leaders, and insists that the DA’s “blue values” are there to appeal to black voters. Recent polls, met with some scepticism among the commentariat, have the DA regaining ground lost in 2019 despite an Ipsos poll on Monday that put it at 11 per cent.

“Ipsos always gets the DA wrong,” says Zille. She doesn’t rule out a coalition with the ANC after 2024 even though “the ANC wants to be in government to loot”. But one mistake is not about to be repeated. There’ll be no deals with the EFF. In Nelson Mandela Bay, where the DA and smaller parties have put together a minority coalition to unseat a plainly incompetent ANC executive (provided the EFF doesn’t prevent it), Zille says EFF leaders are insisting she and DA leader John Steenhuisen negotiate directly with them. She absolutely refuses to do that.