The recent history of the Democratic Alliance (DA) presents an important lesson for relatively new parties like ActionSA, Build One South Africa and Rise Mzansi. In case some have since forgotten, the DA has its origin in three parties which merged in 1989 to form the DA’s predecessor, the Democratic Party (DP).

Those parties were the more established Progressive Federal Party, which was led by the late Dr Zach de Beer and historically did not fare well in the whites-only elections of the time, the Independent Party (formed two years earlier by former academic Dr Dennis Worrall and Wynand Malan), and the National Democratic Movement, which Worrall went on to form the following year after he fell out with Malan.

A former National Party (NP) MP for Randburg, Malan became progressively disillusioned with the NP when it dragged its feet on meaningful reform as it became obsessed, under PW Botha’s leadership, with a security clampdown on anti-apartheid forces through a state of emergency. A former NP MP for Gardens in Cape Town, an equally disillusioned Worrall resigned from his job as South Africa’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom and returned home to contest the 1987 elections, but lost narrowly by 39 votes. Previously the youngest MP in the apartheid parliament, De Beer – who was 24 when he was first elected in 1953 – became PFP leader in 1988.

In 1989, the three men merged their respective parties to form the Democratic Party (DP), and they became co-leaders of the new entity. Worrall was the first to stand down from the troika in 1990, with Malan doing the same on the eve of our inaugural democratic elections in 1993, leaving De Beer to be the sole leader. In those elections, the DP obtained 1,7% of the vote, which gave it seven seats in the National Assembly. Disappointed with the outcome, De Beer resigned as DP leader and was replaced by the combative Tony Leon.

Thanks to Leon’s “Fight Back” campaign that mobilised the country’s minorities against the African majority, the DP obtained 9,56% in the 1999 elections, reducing the New National Party’s vote from 20,39% in 1994 to 6,87%, thus becoming the country’s official opposition, a position the party has held onto since then. A year later, Leon merged the DP with the NNP and Louis Luyt’s Federal Alliance to form the DA. In the 2004 election, the DA cemented its position as the official opposition and obtained 12,37% of the vote. Since then, it has grown to the level of the NNP’s 1994 performance, where it has plateaued.

The DA’s history is one of a series of mergers, going back to the United Party in the 1950s.

I believe that there is a lesson here for ActionSA, Build One SA (BOSA) and Rise Mzansi, which are all fairly recent creations. Although Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA performed well in the 2021 local government elections, obtaining a respectable 16,05% in Johannesburg and 8,64% in Tshwane, the party did not do as well in the 2024 national and provincial elections, and neither did BOSA and Rise Mzansi. Collectively, they obtained just over 2% of the vote.

While there is a chance that most of the established parties, including ActionSA, would have done better, had the uMkhonto weSizwe Party not contested the election, the fact remains that the three newbies fared poorly in these elections. They will no doubt welcome the fact that they have managed to secure a presence in the seventh Parliament, but that is merely a start. While they will now have an opportunity to build national profiles for themselves, there is something even better that they should consider doing right away in preparation for the 2026 local government elections. They should merge, form a new political party and contest the forthcoming elections as a new entity.

We have already shown above how the DA – with its considerable resources – grew, through mergers, from a paltry 1,7% of the vote in 1994 to 21,81% in 2024. As far as I can tell, there is no ideological difference among the three parties. In fact, when Mmusi Maimane stepped down as DA leader in October 2019, shortly after Herman Mashaba announced his resignation as Johannesburg Mayor, some of us thought that they were going to club together to form a new party, especially since Maimane was effusive with praise for Mashaba at that press conference and described him as somebody who was a hero to him. There was disappointment, therefore, when that did not happen.

The three parties are all non-racial, pro-market, pro-meritocracy, anti-corruption and appreciate the urgent need for economic growth. Largely, they are also funded by the same individuals, as their declarations to the Independent Electoral Commission have shown. It is unfortunate that South Africa’s media tended to label Mashaba as a xenophobe for merely calling for orderly immigration into the country, with those who are in the country illegally having to face the full might of the law. After all, no self-respecting country (especially one with the kind of unemployment problems that we have) has such a lackadaisical approach to illegal immigration.  

The only difference between them, it appears to some of us, is a question of who should be the leader. I suggest that Maimane, Mashaba and Rise Mzansi leader Songezo Zibi seriously consider merging their respective parties, in the best interests of the country, and serve as a troika of leaders – like De Beer, Worrall and Malan did in 1999 – between now and the 2026 local government elections. Another alternative may be a rotating presidency for the first five years, with each man getting an opportunity to lead the new party, while the others serve as Deputy President and Chairman respectively. That way, they will lead a bigger Caucus in Parliament and give members of their respective parties an opportunity to get to know them better to be able to make a choice among them for the sole leadership when a national conference is eventually held five years hence.

As the outcome of the recent elections has shown, South Africa desperately needs a consolidation of political parties, rather than a mushrooming of smaller parties which, on their own, will not be effective in Parliament. Given the fact that the late Zanele kaMagwaza-Msibi had walked out of the Inkatha Freedom Party to form the National Freedom Party after falling out with the IFP’s Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the NFP may also be better served by either returning to the IFP or throwing its lot with the new party that would result from the merger suggested above.

The time for big egos is over. Maimane, Mashaba and Zibi should seriously consider putting the country’s interests ahead of their own.

Dr Kaizer M. Nyatsumba is a former Associate Editor of The Independent in London, a Business Rescue Practitioner, a Chartered Director (SA), an academic, the author of On The Precipice and The Transformation and Turnaround of Employers’ Federation SEIFSA (in print), and the Managing Director of KMN Consulting.