Africa-Press – South-Africa. Ahead of the 2024 elections, the DA has announced Solly Msimanga as its premier candidate in Gauteng.
Over the past few weeks, DA leader John Steenhuisen has been crisscrossing the country to announce premier candidates.
The Free State, Northern Cape and Western Cape premier candidates have already been announced.
On Wednesday, Steenhuisen announced that Msimanga would again be the face of the party in Gauteng.
Msimanga, who had just been re-elected as party leader in the province, was the premier candidate in 2019.
Other candidates interviewed for the position were Khume Ramulifho and Ghaleb Cachalia.
Ramulifho had also challenged Msimanga for the position of party leader at the DA Gauteng congress last month.
Steenhuisen said Msimanga “will become the first DA premier of South Africa’s most populous and wealthiest province”.
Steenhuisen said it was always a given that the ANC would get more than 50% of the votes in Gauteng, and it was always clear that the premier would come from the governing party, but that would not be the case in next year’s elections.
He said:
The DA leader said his party needed to “make a giant leap forward” in Gauteng.
“Our job is to make sure that the candidate we are announcing today is inaugurated as Gauteng premier two weeks after next year’s election. To succeed in this mission, every DA member, activist and supporter will need to shift their mindset. For the first time ever, we are not fighting to be the official opposition in Gauteng. Next year, we are fighting to govern Gauteng.
“This means that we need to start behaving like a true government-in-waiting. It means that we need to campaign not only on the basis of the ANC’s failures, but on the basis of the DA’s vision to rescue Gauteng. This requires the DA in this province to take our game to a whole new level,” said Steenhuisen.
He added that the party would have to work hard to register eligible voters, go “to every corner” of the province, and campaign at “every waking moment of every day”.
Steenhuisen said: “If you want a stable Gauteng next year, there is only one right choice: register to vote DA.”
He hailed Msimanga as “…someone who combines experience, enthusiasm and determination in equal measure”.
“He is a son of Atteridgeville, who has previously served as a mayor of South Africa’s capital city, as leader of the official opposition in the Gauteng legislature, and is also the current leader of the DA in Gauteng.
Steenhuisen said:
News24 understands that Msimanga’s advantage over the other candidates was that he had previously led a government.
KwaZulu-Natal is the only one of the “five strategic” provinces in which the DA has not yet officially announced a premier candidate.
Last month, however, News24 reported that Steenhuisen was set to announce the mayor of the Umngeni Municipality, Christopher Pappas, as KwaZulu-Natal’s premier candidate.
The other “strategic provinces” are the Free State, Northern Cape, Western Cape and Gauteng.
According to DA insiders, the party believes it can secure an outright majority in these provinces or become the official opposition. The party will also work at retaining power in the Western Cape.
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