Steenhuisen’s exit exposes a deeper crisis inside the DA

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JEREMY MAGGS: John Steenhuisen, leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA), saying today he will not seek re-election as party leader at the DA’s federal congress in April, a decision that could reshape the future of the party just months before upcoming elections.

Read: Steenhuisen confirms he’ll step down

Reports suggesting deepening internal divisions, mounting criticism over his leadership, and questions about the strategic direction, including the DA’s role in the government of national unity (GNU).

A lot to talk about, and with us from the Institute for Global Dialogue is writer and commentator Sanusha Naidoo. Sanusha, what do you think are the real reasons that he’s stepping aside as DA leader? Is it internal pressure, election strategy, policy failure, a combination of all of that? What is it?

SANUSHA NAIDOO: I think it’s a combination of a number of factors.

His position within the party has been placed under some level of duress, particularly in terms of whether he has the complete confidence of the party and the internal constituencies that make up the party, and whether or not his leadership of the party in terms of is creating coherence and cohesiveness, has that really been a defining and strengthening moment for the party going forward?

There are a few things that were quite interesting in his briefing around not standing for a third term as the DA leader in April.

A lot of it seems to suggest a sense of a “he saved the party” syndrome, which implies that without him the party would not have been able to be part of the GNU. Without him, the party did not grow.

He even went to the extent of citing some of the successes of the South African government through the GNU, like being taken off the grey listing, the issue around our credit rating upgrade, and other things, alluding to the idea that it’s because of the Moonshot Pact that he had created.

It seems to me that what the DA is going through is what happens to a party as it starts getting into more serious dimensions of the political architecture.

He seems to feel that he is the person who made the DA, and that doesn’t really hold muster for how we’ve understood the DA, because the DA has always been about a collective.

We know about the internal challenges, but we’ve never experienced them in the way we’re seeing now, where they’ve blown out into a public spat between himself and Dion George.

Read/listen:
Steenhuisen won’t seek reelection as DA head
Dion George’s resignation exposes growing fault lines inside the DA

Dion George, in reaction to Steenhuisen’s briefing, says it’s not enough that he’s not going to run for a third term as leader of the party, he should step down as a minister. I think that’s quite telling. In a sense, there’s a breakdown.

If you looked at the room and saw who was there, he noted people who are followers. We know he has support in the parliamentary caucus.

However, there are certain members in the caucus who don’t support him as well, and they are young members.

There’s been this tension, and you can’t ignore the explosive resignation interview that Dion George did with eNCA and what came out of that.

The challenge for the party now is dealing with the breakdown of leadership issues. While people are applauding him for not standing for a third term and seeing that as maturity, we need to be careful, because this is an existential crisis for the party.

I made a facetious comment the other day to a colleague, asking whether this is the DA’s Polokwane moment.

JEREMY MAGGS: Sanusha, there are claims and suggestions that the Federal Council chair, Helen Zille, is actively backing a new leadership slate. Is she orchestrating this transition behind the scenes? Is she the puppet master here?

SANUSHA NAIDOO: We’ve never been able to convincingly and empirically say that’s it. But we do know how party politics work across political parties. Whoever is the leader of that party, I think in the case of the DA we know there’s a juxtaposition between herself and whoever she endorses and whoever goes forward.

Read: GNU unlikely to last, DA’s Zille says

We’ve been hearing this a lot in terms of who are her favourites and who the potential individuals are who she wants to see move, grow, and become part of the leadership structure of the party.

One of the names that keeps coming up is the mayor of Cape Town (Geordin Hill-Lewis). Of course, he has also said he’s a very good friend of Steenhuisen.

Whether or not this opens up the pathway for him to feel that he’s not betraying his friend because Steenhuisen has said he’s not going to run.

But I think you can’t ignore the role that Helen plays. It’s also not just Helen. There is a group, and if you extrapolate what Dion George is saying, there’s a conservative group that feels the party has left the runway and veered into another direction. In a sense, they’re trying to pull it back to its basics.

You’ve even heard Tony Leon speak about what this means for the party, especially given that although Steenhuisen has been cleared of the credit card issue and the federal leadership said the money has been reconciled, there are still questions about whether a disciplinary process will follow or what will come out of that.

Of course, George has resigned and hasn’t gone through that. process. So Helen is there, we can’t ignore it.

JEREMY MAGGS: Let me ask you this, you talk about pulling back to the basics. Is Geordin Hill-Lewis the right person to lead the DA into an election? And what might his potential leadership signal about the party’s future direction, given that conventional wisdom suggests he’s the frontrunner?

SANUSHA NAIDOO: He’s a very hands-on mayor in Cape Town, but Cape Town is not a national leadership post. Cape Town is Cape Town.

Read: Hill-Lewis’s brotherly advice from Cape Town to Joburg

The challenge for someone coming into this space is that working in the City of Cape Town and trying to deal with its different mechanisms and service delivery questions, it’s a small ecosystem.

Whether or not he’ll be able to do that at the leadership level of the party is uncertain. He may be able to maintain a level of coherence and stabilisation within the party in terms of where it goes.

Listen: City of Cape Town accused of leaning ‘too heavily’ on those in the ‘middle bracket’

But there are broader issues around how he fits into a bigger, broader context. Some may argue that he has experience as a very effective shadow finance minister when he was in parliament and that he understands that.

But the national space is a bigger ecosystem. There are bigger fights and bigger tensions to navigate.

This circles back to your earlier question about internal dynamics and who is influencing what.

It may be that they want a leader now who a conservative or other entities, including satisfying donors and benefactors and so on, to say, here’s a leader who will not stray from their path, whether it’s Geordin Hill-Lewis or anyone else, they will do what they are told to do.

JEREMY MAGGS: I’m going to leave it there. As always, my appreciation for the analysis. That is Sanusha Naidu, commentator and writer at the Institute for Global Dialogue. Thank you very much, Sanusha.

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