DA’s unexpected outreach to MK Party amid coalition negotiations in KZN

Detailed summary

MK Party national negotiator Advocate Dali Mpofu SC says DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis has reached out to the Jacob Zuma-led party seeking an audience as political parties scramble…

MK Party national negotiator Advocate Dali Mpofu, SC, says DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis has reached out to the Jacob Zuma-led party seeking an audience as political parties scramble to strike coalition deals across the country’s 139 hung municipalities.

Addressing the media at a “Council of the Left” press conference at the Birchwood Hotel in Boksburg, Gauteng, on Thursday, Mpofu said the MK Party would entertain the DA’s request.

“We are aware that he wrote a letter to probably most, if not all, of the organisations here, the EFF, Afrika Mayibuye … they even wrote to the SACP.”

He told journalists that they should ask the DA about the sudden change in its posture towards the MK Party.

“It was [former DA leader] John Steenhuisen who said there’s a doomsday coalition; they’ll never speak to the EFF and MK and what have you, and they wrote to us. We have no control as to what letters that gentleman [Hill-Lewis] writes. So, they wrote to all the parties, and most of the parties, some of the parties here have already met with them, and we, as we indicated yesterday [Wednesday], responded.”

READ | MK Party names coalition negotiations team, urges unity among ‘black parties’

Hill-Lewis, who took over from Steenhuisen as DA leader in April 2026, has adopted a markedly more open posture towards potential coalition partners than his predecessor, who famously warned of a “doomsday coalition” involving the EFF and MK Party in the lead-up to the 2024 general elections.

Hill-Lewis is on record as saying that he wrote to every party in the country seeking an engagement. This includes the MK Party, EFF, and SACP.

Mpofu said the party’s acting secretary-general, Lindiwe Mtshali, responded to Hill-Lewis on Wednesday night.

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