Mmusi Maimane and the leaders of the DA are cock-a-hoop. And why not? Their hard work and dedication has paid off handsomely in Nelson Mandela Bay and in Tshwane, where they have managed what in years past would have been regarded as well-nigh impossible: they attracted more votes than the mighty 104-year-old ANC.These are symbolically massive leaps forward. The party is working to form coalitions and to begin to show that its vaunted performance in Cape Town and the Western Cape can translate into success in the executive capital of the country and in the coastal city named after Mandela, whose name the DA invoked on the campaign trail.Then there are Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni.The ANC took for granted that it would easily win a clear majority and continue to run the municipalities without talking to a single opposition party. Now it is on its knees, begging the PAC to work with it. How times have changed.A closer look at the election results in Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni shows that although the DA has clearly broken the ANC dominance across the urban centres of the country, it still has a lot of work to do to be a real contender to form coalitions or run South Africa in 2019.If anything, these results show that Maimane and his team need to start working now rather than take a long holiday to recharge their batteries.Take Ekurhuleni, for example. ANC support in the municipality dropped by roughly 13 percentage points, compared with the official results from 2011, to 48.64%.The DA, meanwhile, has gained support by four percentage points to 34.15%. But that's still quite a way behind the ANC.Johannesburg shows a similar trend. The ANC dropped 15 percentage points, from 59.66% of the vote five years ago to 44.64%.The DA grew by four percentage points from 2011 to obtain 38.44%.This is a story that says that the ANC is in steep decline. It also says that, although the DA is growing, it needs to do more to take advantage of the ANC's numerous problems - but, at the rate it is growing, it is not. It lacks oomph. It lacks the killer punch. Something in its arsenal is missing.Look at the national numbers. The DA got 26.89% of the total vote, up only 2.95 percentage points from the 23.94 % haul of 2011. That sort of growth is encouraging but does not tell us that there is a champion waiting in the wings to take over in 2019.Look at the ANC. Ag shame, as they say. Even the most admirable people inside the ANC are dazed and confused.I read a column by one of my local heroes, Mavuso Msimang, yesterday.He is an Umkhonto weSizwe veteran and one of the most honourable ANC leaders I know. He is moral, straight, true, unbendable.Msimang's article was titled: "ANC does not deserve this leadership."But it is the same Msimang who was out on the streets canvassing votes for the ANC and its leadership in the run-up to August 3. Other heroes like him (Ahmed Kathrada and others) did exactly the same thing.Msimang, Kathrada and the others need to know that they can't have it both ways. They cannot tell us that the fish is rotting from the head and then ask us to eat it.That is why 3.3million ANC voters did not bother to go to the polls on August 3. They stayed at home and said that they were not going to be part of the wanton, shameless corruption of the Jacob Zuma regime.This is the divided, confused, leaderless ANC that Maimane is faced with. But the growth of support for the DA in this month's elections was not enough to vitiate the possibility that the ANC will be able to galvanise some of those 3.3million disgruntled voters into returning to the fold. That would stop Maimane dead in his tracks.He needs to do something and he needs to start now. He needs to accelerate the delivery of the message that the DA is a party for all.He needs to push the message, especially in the constituencies in which it most needs to be heard: Soweto, Mamelodi, Soshanguve - areas in which the ANC's supporters silently turned their backs on the party and stayed at home.He needs to reach out to other opposition parties - a devastated COPE and a dwindling UDM - and finalise a proper merger with them within a year.He needs to do what Tony Leon did with the National Party, and learn how merging with the Independent Democrats catapulted the DA into power in Western Cape.The spotlight will be on the ANC over the next few years.The real pressure, however, is on Maimane. He has a tough job to do if he wants to become president in 2019. He'd better start now. ..