John Steenhuisen is out. Like the rest of the media, we’ve spent the last week coming to terms with what his decision to walk away from the DA leadership means for the party, the country, the GNU and, at the risk of sounding haughty, for democracy itself.
It’s undeniably big news. Whether it will change the fabric of the DA is a far more contentious question.
These words are being written as Steenhuisen’s own are sprawled out in our sister paper, Sunday Times. He was not pushed, he said.
“It’s a personal decision, completely. There’s absolutely — and I say on the record and unequivocally — there’s no deal that’s been done.”
They are words he has to say ... but words that fail to turn sceptical ears. The DA is well known for keeping a manicured lawn: it favours order and control, or at least a semblance of the two, above all else. There are few decisions made in the halls of blue that do not fit into a longer-term agenda.
Those of us who are foolish enough to be football fans of either the beleaguered Manchester United or Chelsea know the modus operandi all too well. Modern teams have cottoned on to the reality of how expensive it is to rely on the capricious whims of one man. Whereas managers once controlled the philosophical, strategic and cultural directions of the club, those duties now fall to a boardroom. The neutered figurehead on the sidelines has now been reduced to a “coach”.
Now, the DA needs a new coach.
Geordin Hill-Lewis, if reports are to be believed, has been tapped as that person.
His credentials notwithstanding, it would arguably be a mistake to send him down a frictionless road to party leadership, to deny him the public spectacle of going to battle with his views and ideas.
Or as Peter Bruce simply put it in that same Sunday Times: “It would be good if he were challenged. That way we would get to know more about him.”
Moreover, the modern voter is far more intelligent than political consultants presume. She loathes nothing more than a manufactured candidate — a person moulded into the perfect product like Woolworths might a Chuckles bar.
We need only look to the Democratic Party in the US — an organisation struggling for relevance in a two-party system — for how disastrous that approach can be. The establishment has routinely frozen out the mildest opposition to its antiquated views of liberal governance. That folly reached its nadir when it was forced to field Kamala Harris — an impersonal caricature of a politician.
Countless recent triumphs of populism around the globe are as much a rejection of that conceit as anything else.
The ailing ANC should rarely be used as an exemplar for anything in the political world, but there is no denying the noise it generates when its elective conferences roll around. Any journalist will tell you that covering one is like entering the 7th rung of hell. It’s a week of sweat, no sleep and scavenging for meagre soundbites. But we’re forced to play the game because the soul of the party, and (to a diminishing extent) the country, rides on the outcome.
The DA, of course, deliberately presents itself as the antithesis of that mayhem. Its dedication to unity can be noble. But a civil scrap, should Helen Zille allow it, will humanise the new leader in a way that an endorsement never could.
No-one wants to vote for someone they feel was chosen by a committee. Let alone a marionette. Frustration with party politics is at its apex: dwindling turnout rates suggest South Africans want someone who represents more than the purported values of their badge. As the late, great Paddy Harper put it heading into the last election: “I know what I’ll be voting for, but not who.”
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.