Leaders
Leaders of the Democratic Alliance, and its predecessor parties:
| Entered office | Left office | Party name | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jan Steytler 1 | November 1959 | December 1970 | Progressive Party |
| 2 | Harry Lawrence2 | December 1970 | February 1971 | |
| 3 | Harry Schwarz 3 | February 1975 | July 1975 | |
| 3 | Colin Eglin4 | February 1971 | July 1975 | |
| July 1975 | 1977 | Progressive Reform Party | ||
| 1977 | 1979 | Progressive Federal Party | ||
| 4 | Frederik van Zyl Slabbert | 1979 | 1986 | |
| 5 | Colin Eglin | 1986 | 1988 | |
| 6 | Zach de Beer | 1988 | 1989 | |
| 7,8 | Zach de Beer, Denis Worrall and Wynand Malan5 | 1989 | 1994 | Democratic Party |
| 9 | Tony Leon | 1994 | 2000 | |
| 2000 | May 2007 | Democratic Alliance | ||
| 10 | Helen Zille6 | May 2007 | present | |
- 1 Between 1961 and 1970, Steytler served as party leader from outside Parliament, where Helen Suzman was the party's sole representative.
- 2 Interim leader.
- 3 Schwarz was leader of the Reform Party that broke away from the United Party and which merged with the Progressive Party. He was not ever leader of the Progressive Party itself, although he became part of the collective leadership of the newly-merged Progressive Reform Party.
- 4 First Progressive Leader of the Opposition in Parliament (from 1977).
- 5 Co-leaders, following the formation of the Democratic Party in 1989.
- 6 Zille, like Steytler and Lawrence, serves as leader from outside of Parliament, where she is represented by a separate Parliamentary Leader - first Sandra Botha, and then later Athol Trollip.
Read more about this topic: Democratic Alliance (South Africa)
Famous quotes containing the word leaders:
“It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.”
—Abba Eban (b. 1915)
“Unless the people can choose their leaders and rulers, and can revoke their choice at intervals long enough to test their measures by results, the government will be a tyranny exercised in the interests of whatever classes or castes or mobs or cliques have this choice.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher—a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It’s the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)