John Steenhuisen’s impending exit as DA leader will be felt beyond the party. How it moves and talks in the coming days will set the tone for the government of national unity (GNU) and South Africa’s political landscape.
Steenhuisen became DA leader through a conspiracy of circumstances. This was after the ejection of Mmusi Maimane, now the leader of Build One South Africa, as the party’s leader after a disappointing performance in elections.
In just more than two months, the party, which now co-governs with the ANC, will elect Steenhuisen’s successor at a national conference and that meeting will have to decide that person’s future both in the DA and the party’s participation in the GNU. The DA must also decide whose face it wants on the ballot ahead of the municipal elections, likely to take place at the end of the year.
Steenhuisen’s exit has wider implications.
For his party, this is an emergency withdrawal. Coming as it did after an unseemly public spat with Dion George, a senior party official, one might assume that his pullout from the race was not entirely voluntary.
In the coming days and weeks, the party will have to explain what really transpired to orchestrate Steenhuisen’s departure. Among the many questions to answer, the party has to explain when — and how — Steenhuisen’s continued leadership became unviable. And was his exit a result of his disaffection with the core support of the DA or a fallout with the party’s funders?
But while Steenhuisen has often been an easy target for the party’s foibles, he ought to be credited for managing its tribal wars. Co-existing with Helen Zille, his larger-than-life colleague and DA mayor candidate for Johannesburg, couldn’t have been easy.
His collaborations outside the blue borders have been a mixed bag. The Moonshot Pact, a pre-election anti-ANC alliance of centrist parties, was a failure. While Steenhuisen would argue differently, smaller parties such as ActionSA and the IFP have publicly vented their frustration with the DA.
Up until recently, he did maintain a semblance of party cohesion even after its tricky coalition with the ANC. The departure of George, the most high-profile DA exit after the GNU’s formation, came not due to GNU politics, but more as a result of intra-DA wrangling.
Like President Cyril Ramaphosa, the ANC leader, Steenhuisen had to manage his party’s opposition to going into bed with the populist elements of the ANC.
Helping get the GNU over the line will go down as one of his outsized contributions to the stability of the country. The stability of the GNU is a credit to the two largest parties ― the DA and ANC.
Steenhuisen has signalled that he wants to continue in his GNU role to continue fighting to defeat foot-and-mouth disease. Such statements have the ring of language he and his party have agreed on.
What the DA has to prove to the country is how much value they place on a successful GNU. Keeping Steenhuisen as agriculture minister will not itself be sufficient. More will be required to assuage South Africans’ anxieties. This will include a commitment of the DA funders to the GNU as a growth-enhancing project.
There is a school of thought that the DA is a less effective vehicle for the democratic project inside the polite confines of the GNU than as its virulent official opposition. It’s a suggestion that will continue to linger in a busy political year.
For now, the DA needs to give a process answer: what transitional process will it employ to avoid uncertainty in governance between now and when it replaces Steenhuisen as party leader?
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