MMUSI MAIMANE, South Africa’s youthful new opposition leader, is an agreeably modern man of his country. He grew up in Soweto, a sprawling black township on the edge of Johannesburg, the son of migrant labourers. He won a bursary to a good school, then earned two masters’ degrees. He married a white woman, Natalie, whom he met through church. They live in the sedate suburbs of Johannesburg with their two young children. After a swift rise through the ranks of the Democratic Alliance (DA), the main opposition party, Mr Maimane, who is 34, became its leader on May 10th.

MMUSI MAIMANE, South Africa’s youthful new opposition leader, is an agreeably modern man of his country. He grew up in Soweto, a sprawling black township on the edge of Johannesburg, the son of migrant labourers. He won a bursary to a good school, then earned two masters’ degrees. He married a white woman, Natalie, whom he met through church. They live in the sedate suburbs of Johannesburg with their two young children. After a swift rise through the ranks of the Democratic Alliance (DA), the main opposition party, Mr Maimane, who is 34, became its leader on May 10th.

His landslide election at a party congress makes him the first black man to lead the liberal DA. He takes over from Helen Zille, a former anti-apartheid journalist, who is white. She strove to shift the DA from looking like a party for whites and make it a realistic alternative to the ruling African National Congress (ANC).

Now Mr Maimane must seek to pose a serious challenge to the ANC, which has governed since 1994 and will rule, says President Jacob Zuma, “until Jesus comes again”. The ANC has shed support in the past two elections, but even under the unpopular Mr Zuma it got 62% of votes last time, in 2014. That was still far ahead of the DA, whose vote crept up from 17% to 22%.

Mr Maimane acknowledges that being successful in South African politics is not as simple as being black. His party must begin to challenge the ANC in its rural heartlands and reach out to black voters elsewhere, most of them still emotionally attached to the party of Nelson Mandela.

It has a long way to go. Before the last general election Ipsos, a pollster, reckoned that half the DA’s supporters were white, 27% Coloured (South Africans of mixed-race ancestry), 20% black and 3% Indian; whereas 96% of the ANC’s faithful were black. In response to the DA’s efforts to diversify, many ANC leaders have sneered. A cabinet member recently had to apologise after calling Mr Maimane a “hired native”.

One plus for the DA is that where it has won power it has done well. The city of Cape Town and the province of Western Cape, both DA-run, are widely considered to be better governed than the ANC’s main fiefs. The DA’s rosy rhetoric echoes Nelson Mandela’s dream of a rainbow nation.

But in recent months a smaller, angrier opposition party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), has stolen the spotlight. Led by Julius Malema, a populist former ANC Youth League leader, it has appealed to frustrated young black voters. Eusebius McKaiser, a prominent commentator, argues that Mr Maimane will need to move away from rainbow nation platitudes and tackle the thorniest issues facing South Africa, such as land reform.

Local elections next year will test Mr Maimane. A tight race is expected in the municipalities of Johannesburg, Pretoria and Nelson Mandela Bay, which includes Port Elizabeth, where the ANC squeaked back into power in 2011. If it is to advance, the DA may have to build ad hoc coalitions with other bits of the opposition. Apart from the EFF, a left-wing workers’ party is being planned by a breakaway from the main trade-union confederation. Mr Maimane knows that the DA will not suddenly win national power on its own.