He was serving as communications director in early 2011 during a divisive internal contest over the position of DA parliamentary leader, fought between Lindiwe Mazibuko and Athol Trollip.
[8] After leaving the DA, van Onselen redoubled his public commentary, both in a weekly column for the Business Day and in his liberalism-focused blog, Inside Politics.
Calling him both a "sharp and ruthless writer and commentator" and a "melancholy, idealistic misanthrope", the Daily Maverick's Marianne Thamm said of van Onselen, "He is a man seized by an irrepressible drive to impress his thoughts and ideas of the world and the country we live in".
[15] Quite contrarily, prominent figures inside the DA accused van Onselen of an anti-DA bias, which they said originated in resentment related to his acrimonious departure from the party.
[9][22] These accusations emerged primarily in response to van Onselen's sustained public criticism of Mmusi Maimane, who at the time was Zille's heir-apparent as DA federal leader.
[29] This led to another series of ripostes in the media,[30] culminating in a particularly hostile op-ed by Davis, who accused van Onselen of having been an unprofessional and divisive communications director and described him as "an embittered former party hack".
[9] In the aftermath of the saga, Rian Malan wrote to the Business Day suggesting that the newspaper should provide a clear account of van Onselen's history and agenda with respect to the DA.
[37] The firm rose to prominence in the run-up to the May 2024 general election, when van Onselen's team at Victory was commissioned to conduct opinion polling for the Social Research Foundation, a think-tank led by former SAIRR head Frans Cronje.
[38] In February 2020, Daily Maverick editor Ferial Haffajee suggested on Twitter that van Onselen's impartiality was compromised because Gwen Ngwenya, the DA's head of policy, was his "partner".