DA sends Hill-Lewis to the polls with one message: only we can beat the ANC

The Democratic Alliance put its leader at the centre of election day, posting photographs of Geordin Hill-Lewis casting his vote and telling residents that “every vote matters”.

The party’s official X account carried the message on Wednesday under the banner of a “Blue Wave for change”, urging supporters to turn out with a single argument in front of them.

“Only the DA is big enough to beat the ANC and take more towns and cities forward, for all,” the party said in the post, which also pointed followers to a YouTube livestream of its election-day coverage.

The pitch is a familiar one from the DA and it is being made again at the ballot box rather than in a manifesto: that a vote for the party is the most direct route to removing the ANC from control of councils and metros, and that coalition arithmetic in the country’s hung municipalities makes that claim worth testing.

The party did not, in the post, set out which towns or cities it expects to take, and it gave no seat or percentage target. Its message was directed at residents generally rather than at any named ward or municipality.

Hill-Lewis, the DA leader, is also the mayor of Cape Town, a metro the party has held and used as its most visible example of city government. The post presented his own trip to the polls as an example for supporters to follow.

The DA’s record on the campaign trail, and the record of the councils it already runs, are the ground on which voters will judge the claim. The party’s assertion that it is the only force able to beat the ANC is a position it holds and states, not a finding, and the result will settle it.

What the party asked for on the day was simple enough: that residents go out and vote.