Former DA leader and Western Cape premier Helen Zille has joined the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) as a senior policy fellow, writer and analyst, it was announced on Sunday.

"I hope to continue the battle of ideas outside of direct party politics and as such, I will be writing and speaking about liberal ideas and solutions to South Africa's problems," she said in a video clip.

She added in a statement that the IRR provided a platform to defeat "racial nationalist and neo-Marxist ideas" by doing three things: uniting the middle, protecting property rights and promoting individual freedoms.

Zille, who led the DA between 2007 and 2015, detailed where she would be focusing her influence.

She planned to help build support to stop expropriation of land without compensation; protect savings and pensions; halt efforts to "destroy the South African healthcare sector through NHI [National Health Insurance] and adopt empowerment policies based on actual disadvantage rather than race".

Zille began her career as a journalist for the Rand Daily Mail, where she helped uncover the circumstances leading to the death of Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko in 1977.

After entering formal party politics in 1999, she was elected to the Western Cape legislature and thereafter served as a DA MP and Mayor of Cape Town, before serving as premier between 2009 and 2015.