Can South Africa’s Main Opposition Party Overcome Its Internal Divisions?

South Africa’s largest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, or DA, is in turmoil following its poor showing in parliamentary and provincial elections earlier this year. Several senior black figures in the DA, including Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba and Mmusi Maimane, the DA’s first black leader, left the party last month. Their resignations came on the heels of the return of the party’s controversial former leader, Helen Zille, to a top leadership post. Zille, who is white, has a history of making remarks seen as racially insensitive, so her return was widely interpreted as a sign that the party would recalibrate […]