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This weekend, a gathering of the South African Communist Party, the EFF, MKP and fellow left-wing parties, unions and like-minded organisations will meet in Boksburg under the banner of “The Conference of the Left” to discuss the future of South Africa’s economy.

Most South Africans will not notice the conference. Most people are far too busy worrying about the real economy: whether they can find work, keep the lights on, get safely to work, pay rent, feed their families, or give their children a better life.

But the conference does offer a useful reminder of the great choice facing South Africa.

On one side is the old politics of the 20th century that is destructive of the economy. More state control, more nationalisation, more bureaucracy, more slogans, more hostility to business, and more promises that politicians can centrally plan prosperity into existence through the earnest repetition of dogma.

At its heart, this is a philosophical difference between those who believe prosperity is created by the state directing society from above, and those who believe prosperity is created when free people, strong communities and growing businesses are given the space to build, invest, work and flourish.

The results of the destructive philosophy of the ANC and its ideological cousins are plain to see all around us in South Africa.

The ANC is not invited to the Conference of the Left. Indeed, it is organised as something of a protest against the ANC ‘selling out’ and to pressure them back into the fold.

There is irony here: The only reason left-wing economics has any currency at all in South Africa is because the ANC has failed to grow the economy to lift people out of poverty, and that same left wing populism is now organising against the ANC threatening to abandon it for good.

Regardless of the endless new fractures and fissures in that movement, the fact remains that it is the application of this broad philosophy by the ANC itself that has stymied economic growth and social progress in our country for so long.

Today, official unemployment stands at 32.7%, with 8.1 million South Africans unemployed. On a per person basis, income today is below where it was in 2007.

This means millions of South Africans wake up every morning wanting to work, wanting to contribute, wanting to stand on their own feet but finding the door to opportunity closed.

And yet, the answer from much of the old left is still the same, namely to give the state more power, let politicians control more of the economy, punish success, regulate more, and pretend that government can create prosperity while chasing away the very investment and enterprise that create jobs. And the answer from the ANC is to tinker with halting reforms that are moving far too slowly, and don’t go nearly far enough to free the economy.

South Africa cannot afford another decade of failed ideas or unambitious reforms.

There is another way.

Where the DA governs, we are proving that government can work. Not just in theory, but in the daily lives of people.

It is not luck nor chance that where we govern, investment grows and unemployment tumbles. The Western Cape has the lowest unemployment rate in the country. In the fourth quarter of 2025, unemployment in the province dropped to 18.1%, far below the national rate. Over that same quarter, the Western Cape added 93 000 jobs, supported by investment, better-run municipalities, infrastructure delivery and basic services that enable businesses to grow.

In Cape Town, the DA has worked every day to make the city more reliable, more investable and more hopeful.

We are investing in infrastructure at record levels. We are cleaning up public transport corridors, expanding safer communities work, cutting red tape, protecting basic services, and doing what good governments are supposed to do: create the conditions in which people and businesses can flourish.

The DA does not have all the national economic levers. We do not control ports, rail, policing, energy regulation, labour law, or national tax policy. But even without those levers, DA governments have shown what is possible when government is clean, competent and focused on delivery for all.

Now imagine what South Africa could achieve if those same principles were applied nationally.

That is why the GNU must move faster, and with much greater urgency, to remake the state so that it supports growth instead of smothering it.

South Africa needs this urgency.

A DA-led national government will put growth and jobs at the centre of everything. We will make it easier to start and grow a business. We will open the economy to investment. We will fix the infrastructure that connects people to opportunity. We will clean up government, end cadre deployment, and build a state that serves citizens rather than politicians.

Above all, we will restore hope.

The vast majority of South Africans believe our country is going in the wrong direction. They see unemployment, crime, corruption and decay, and many have given up hope that things can change.

My mission is to prove that they can.

To show that politicians can be clean. That governments can deliver. That South Africa can still be fixed.

South Africa can work, for everyone.

Issued by DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis