John Steenhuisen vows to keep DA true to core principles

Newly elected DA leader John Steenhuisen has set his sights on 2021’s crucial local government elections, assuring voters that SA’s second-largest party will not turn its back on its core principles again.

Steenhuisen was elected with former leader Helen Zille, who will remain federal council chair, arguably the most powerful position in the party.

The election of the new leadership for SA’s official opposition party was a critical part of ensuring stability in the party after a devastating election outcome in 2019 that led to former leader Mmusi Maimane resigning almost exactly a year ago.

The party has since been focusing on ensuring it knows what it is and what it stands for, which culminated in a policy conference in September in which the party rejected race as a means to categorise people in a country still groaning under the legacy of apartheid. 

The election of Steenhuisen, who has been the interim leader since Maimane resigned, and Zille, who has also been in her post for the year, during its congress was expected.

Steenhuisen won with 80% of the votes, and Zille received 69% of the votes to beat Gauteng chair Mike Moriarty for the position.

Polling done by Steenhuisen’s campaign indicated that he took more than 90% of the vote in the Western Cape, the Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga and the Northern Cape. The campaign polling indicated that he received 78% of the support in Gauteng and 68% in KwaZulu-Natal, where he and his opponent, Mbali Ntuli, hail from.

More than 2,000 delegates attended the party’s first virtual congress.

Liberal party

Ntuli, a KwaZulu-Natal MPL, tweeted on Sunday, after the outcome, that she is proud of the party and that the real work starts now.

In his acceptance speech, Steenhuisen acknowledged that the party has made mistakes in the past, and that there have been times when the DA “failed to be a dependable ally in the people’s fight for power”.

“For a while, we lost sight of who we were and what we offer: clear, principled and decisive leadership. Fortunately, mistakes don’t have to be fatal — provided you learn from them,” Steenhuisen said.

He said the days of breaking trust with South Africans are “well and truly over”.  

“Under my leadership, the DA will never again turn our back on our core principles. We are a liberal party committed to nonracialism, a market economy and a capable state that empowers citizens and cares for the vulnerable,” he said.

He said the first opportunity for the DA to begin wresting power from the ANC will be in 2021 during the local government elections.

“That is why I am asking you to get out there and register to vote DA in your local municipality,” he said.

It will be a critical task for the DA’s new leadership to reverse the setbacks it experienced in 2019, which caused voters — notably Afrikaans voters — to shift support to most prominently the Freedom Front Plus.

Over the past year, the party has been on a mission to woo Afrikaans voters, as seen in some resolutions passed by the congress at the weekend.

These included that the party will push to have farm attacks and murders declared a hate and priority crime, while the DA also affirmed its commitment to protect and expand mother-tongue education, both key issues for Afrikaans voters.

While the local government elections are the main target, a huge by-election in less than two weeks, on November 11, will be the first test for the DA to gauge voter sentiment after the policy conference and the election of its new leaders.

CORRECTION: November 11 2020

A previous version of this story incorrectly said the DA rejected economic redress policies, when it actually rejected race as a means to categorise people. We apologise for the error that was introduced during the editing process

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