Steenhuisen’s Downfall and the Many Contradictions of the GNU

John Steenhuisen, leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA), announced on Wednesday that he will not seek re-election at the party’s Federal Congress in April. What went wrong?

Steenhuisen’s decision not to run for a third term can be attributed to multiple factors, including the fallout from the sacking of Dion George, his personal financial troubles and his poor handling of the Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) outbreak.

These were just the triggering events, but ultimately – like all politicians – he simply ran out of political capital. Politics can be unforgiving, and when Steenhuisen became a liability for the party, it decided he had to go.

Credit where it’s due

Steenhuisen deserves much credit for rescuing the DA from its low point in 2019 after Mmusi Maimane abruptly resigned from his post and abandoned the party.

In those rebuilding years, Steenhuisen restored the party’s electoral machinery and was able to grow the DA’s share of the national vote (despite fewer people voting for the party on aggregate). Initially under Steenhuisen’s leadership, the DA refocused on its core constituency and reaffirmed its liberal values – such as its commitment to non-racialism.

Steenhuisen’s resignation speech was quite a contrast to his predecessor’s. Instead of lashing out against those who engineered his ouster, Steenhuisen proudly defended his tenure noting that leading the party had been the “honour of a lifetime”.

There is much speculation about what happened behind the scenes, but the fact that a sitting leader voluntarily stepped down says much about the internal culture of the DA. Compare this to the African National Congress (ANC), whose succession battles tear the party apart, or the multitude of one-seat parties whose leaders hold on forever.

Knowing when to quit is a difficult thing, and Steenhuisen should be applauded for stepping down in the interests of his party. His exit from the leadership race gives the DA time to regroup ahead of the April Congress and to prepare for the local government election at the end of the year.

The perils of going national

Steenhuisen defined his legacy as being the first DA leader to take the party into national government. He is factually correct on this, but history will be the judge of whether that was actually good for the DA or its voters.

I would argue that is where things went awry for Steenhuisen and his party.

Joining the national government has introduced many contradictions into the DA’s internal politics, and I believe it is these contradictions which caused many of the problems that eventually led to Steenhuisen’s downfall.

That Cabinet ministers are understood, perhaps erroneously, to serve at the discretion of the President of South Africa, has meant in practice that senior DA officials, including its leader, were under the ultimate authority of the leader of the ANC – their historical enemies. This could only mean that the interests of the DA and its constituencies would be subsumed into a broader agenda set by the (ANC-dominated) executive.

In June 2025, when Andrew Whitfield was fired on spurious grounds as Deputy Minister of Trade, Industry, and Competition by the President – with barely a whimper of protest from the DA – it was clear that the DA would tolerate a great deal of abuse from its so-called coalition “partners”.

In a healthier coalition dynamic, Ramaphosa would have had to secure the consent of his partner, Steenhuisen, before making any such move. The DA’s timid response set an unfortunate precedent.

This was partly of the DA’s own making, positioning itself as the only thing standing between order and the so-called “Doomsday Coalition”. When the DA was invariably mistreated by the ANC it became impossible to threaten to leave the Government of National Unity (GNU) if the alternative was always “doomsday”.

Parliament sidelined

With the ANC at arguably its weakest point ever after the May 2024 elections, this was an opportunity to recentre Parliament as an arena of vigorous political contestation.

We saw a glimpse of what a more muscular parliamentary caucus could achieve when the DA stood firm on the proposed 2% VAT increase in the National Budget of February 2025. DA brinkmanship forced the Minister of Finance to delay the adoption of the Budget and ultimately to withdraw the proposal.

However, on many occasions, the DA’s parliamentary caucus was sidelined by the “Cabinet caucus”.

When Emma Powell, the DA’s spokesperson on foreign affairs, confronted the established (ANC) interests at the Department of International Relations and Cooperation and challenged South Africa’s damaging foreign policy trajectory, she was abandoned by her party and compelled to resign from her role last July.

Policy inertia

I was one of the many commentators who welcomed the DA’s private members’ legislation, the Economic Inclusion for All Bill. Proposed by DA Head of Policy, Mat Cuthbert, the Bill represented a credible alternative to the prevailing Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) framework.

I argued in these pages that while the Bill is an important statement of the DA’s commitment to non-racialism, the DA already has the power to defy race-based laws in the departments it governs.

Despite this, Minister Steenhuisen has exercised his powers to renew so-called AgriBEE codes in the agricultural sector. (Lamentably, other non-ANC ministers have done the same in their respective departments.)

More recently, Steenhuisen’s insistence on a centrally managed state-led response to FMD unnecessarily alienated farmers by preventing them from privately administering vaccines to their own herds. This prompted civil society organisations Sakeliga, the Southern African Agricultural Initiative (SAAI), and Free State Agriculture, to approach the courts to overturn the prohibition.

In both examples – AgriBEE and FMD litigation – Steenhuisen angrily accused organised business and agricultural “lobbies” (as he called them) of trying to recruit members at his expense. This did untold damage to the very relationships Steenhuisen had painstakingly repaired after the disastrous Maimane years.

In defence of brinkmanship

It didn’t have to be this way.

If, as many argue, the ANC needs the DA in the coalition, then the DA could have behaved differently, threatening to leave the GNU if its policies were not implemented. Partnerships require mutual respect, but the DA has seemed too willing to occupy a subordinate status.

There are numerous examples of where the leader put country before party. Many people might say that was the patriotic thing for him to do, but DA supporters voted for a liberal programme, not to reinforce the policy status quo of the ANC disguised as the “national interest”.

Steenhuisen’s departure is an opportunity to revisit the original premise of the GNU and to confront its many fraught contradictions. The DA should learn from its experience and not double down on mistakes made.

Ansara is CEO of the Free Market Foundation.