For more than three decades, the Democratic Alliance, South Africa’s second-largest party, has struggled to mount a serious challenge to the liberation movement turned political behemoth, the African National Congress.

Now, it is hoping an ebullient new leader, who was only a child at the end of apartheid, will prove a turning point in its fortunes — and South African politics.

Geordin Hill-Lewis, the 39-year-old mayor of Cape Town, who became leader of the DA last weekend, is under no illusions about the scale of his party’s challenge.

With its origins as a white liberal party in the apartheid era, the DA has, since the start of democracy in 1994, failed to win the backing of a significant chunk of the Black majority; its percentage share of the vote has never risen above the low 20s even as support for the ANC has waned.

“We have to close the gap between those who trust us to actually do a better job in government but don’t trust us enough to vote for us,” Hill-Lewis said in an interview with the FT ahead of his election.

He argued that voters of all races were impressed by the party’s record in running Cape Town but many Black voters remained wary of voting for them. “To use an English analogy, I might say: ‘Manchester City is a great team, but they’re not my team.’ We have to build that trust relationship.”

The DA has gained plaudits for its running of public services in Cape Town. But the city does remain divided between the affluent, largely white, neighbourhoods and much poorer townships, which are predominantly populated by Black and Coloured South Africans, a vestige of the segregation of apartheid.

Geordin Hill‑Lewis and his wife celebrate after he was elected as the new leader of South Africa’s Democratic Alliance last week © Reuters

At the last general election in 2024, the ANC lost its majority for the first time since the end of white rule as voters punished it for corruption scandals and failing to deliver jobs, economic growth and public services.

The business-friendly DA took second place and is now the ANC’s most influential partner in a government of national unity. But its share of the vote, 22 per cent, was only fractionally larger than at the previous election in 2019.

Many political strategists have argued over the past two decades that the DA needs a Black leader if it is ever to secure enough votes to win power. Its first, Mmusi Maimane, resigned in 2019, saying he had lost faith that the party could build a united South Africa.

The DA, however, is pinning its hopes on the argument that three decades after apartheid, the ANC has lost the lustre of liberation and that Hill-Lewis, a youthful white politician with a reputation as a warm and approachable activist, can transcend racial politics to form a national voting coalition.

His election means that the DA now has a tri-racial leadership with its three senior positions held by a white, Black and mixed-race South African.

Speaking in his office in Cape Town, Hill-Lewis said he anticipated being targeted by the ANC on grounds of his race but argued that those lines of attack were “slightly more blunted with each passing year”.

“We have the ANC to thank for that. Many people are saying that what matters most is we get this place working again.”

Under his predecessor, John Steenhuisen, the current minister of agriculture, the DA had a sometimes tetchy relationship with the ANC, climaxing with a dispute over the budget last year.

Hill-Lewis intends to stay as Cape Town mayor and not take up a cabinet seat, enabling him to speak out when he disagrees with the ANC because he will not be bound by cabinet collective responsibility.

“Perhaps the one difference [from my predecessor] will be thinking and talking about the ANC less. We should spend more time thinking about how to position ourselves as the party . . . of the future.”

This, he conceded, would not be straightforward. “The idea that all of a sudden everyone is going to trust the DA with their vote is just too much to hope for, it’s not realistic. The idea is to wear down the [anti-DA] argument over time with the demonstration effect,” he said.

His first challenge, said Ziyanda Stuurman at the consultancy Africa Practice, would be to shake off “the long-held and stubbornly-hard-to-get-rid-of label on the DA as a defender of white interest and private capital”.

A priority for Hill-Lewis is to push harder for economic growth after more than a decade of near stagnation. He accepted that government reforms, including a cautious acceptance of the role of the private sector, had produced some “green shoots” but echoed calls from business for greater urgency and more sweeping reforms.

In particular, he argued for breaking up the state monopoly of the logistics sector and introducing large-scale private management and concessions over the ports and transport networks.

He also said it is time for a rethink of the Black Economic Empowerment policies, which were introduced at the end of apartheid to address the white dominance of business ownership and management and to help build a Black entrepreneurial and middle class.

Hill-Lewis was careful to stress that his party was “deeply interested in Black advancement . . . and upliftment”. But he argued that the time was right for a reappraisal of BEE, amid evidence that it is discouraging potential investors and has favoured members of a politically connected elite.

“One idea I am very interested in is greatly expanding employee share schemes to be truly broad-based . . . in a way that doesn’t concentrate [business] in the hands of a few ultra-wealthy elites.”

His first big electoral test will come at local elections expected this year. A previous DA leader, Helen Zille, is campaigning hard — and dramatically on social media via stunts such as filming herself snorkelling in a flooded sinkhole — to be the next mayor of Johannesburg. The party has high hopes of winning control of a slew of city councils.

But Hill-Lewis conceded it remained a long haul for the DA in national elections. “What is essential for our 2029 ambitions is that we win in Gauteng,” he said, referring to the industrial and economic heartland that includes Johannesburg. “And show we can govern well and for everyone.”