The Democratic Alliance (DA) is important.

It is a redoubtable opposition to the irredeemably corrupt African National Congress (ANC). It has many talented people in its ranks and has good leadership, especially young leadership, also provincially and locally. The DA carefully selects its candidates for public office, applying, among other things, strict quality screening, and it dedicates considerable attention to internal training. This and more explains why wherever the DA governs, it does so effectively and with corruption the exception rather than the rule.

Hence, the DA, whether or not one votes for it, is a valuable asset for public life in South Africa.

Yet cleaner government and an anti-corruption culture fall way short of what is required by a political party to secure support. What is crucial, specifically in South Africa, is that opposition parties should be ideologically cogent and act as a principled adversary of the baleful leftist and statist ANC.

In some circles within the DA, this is not sufficiently realised or practised, leading the party to suffer symptoms of “ANC-lightism”. The DA suffered from this ailment in the run-up to the 2019 election, but a sound self-correction initiative at the behest mainly of Helen Zille enabled the party to (somewhat) cured itself.

Looming

Yet the same malady is again looming, as some senior figures in the DA, most prominently outgoing leader John Steenhuisen, seem severely off-kilter, ideologically speaking. Possibly without Steenhuisen being aware of it, he, and some in his circle who err with him, have squarely manoeuvred themselves into the ideological sphere of the ANC.

The case in point is Steenhuisen’s rage against the three organisations currently instituting litigation against his department over his regulating of the private management of foot-and-mouth disease. The three organisations are business organisation Sakeliga and two agricultural organisations, the Southern African Agri Initiative (SAAI) and Free State Agriculture.

(To be sure, Steenhuisen’s animosity against Sakeliga actually goes right back to the moment of his assuming the position of minister of agriculture some twenty months ago.)

Steenhuisen angrily branded these and other organisations, such as AfriForum and Solidarity, as AfriMAGA. The label was also used by prominent DA figure Ryan Coetzee in an X post, “AfriMAGA (as we call them)” suggesting that “AfriMAGA” might have wider circulation in the DA. Steenhuisen’s Cabinet colleague Dean Macpherson is also associated with the use of AfriMAGA.

Steenhuisen’s AfriMAGA ire is demonstrably unwise, to put it mildly. It is nothing but warring with a long-standing voting constituency of the DA. And no doubt Steenhuisen and his colleagues’ condemnation of their AfriMAGA enemy is amounting to aligning the DA with the ANC, which is also profoundly opposed to at least some of these organisations.

Ideological Defect

This, however, pales against a much more profound defect Steenhuisen and his coterie are betraying. This is an ideological defect. Steenhuisen and his circle clearly have no grasp of the ideological conflicts at stake in South Africa, and show a very underdeveloped understanding, if any at all, about which side of this conflict they find themselves.

The ANC is a profoundly totalitarian organisation, informed by communist ideology and thus taking its ideological cue from the worst totalitarian examples, including the Soviet Union, Communist China, Castro’s Cuba, and the Venezuela of Chávez and Maduro.

The ANC has never made a secret of its totalitarian ambitions. It has spelt out time without number in its policy documents that it wants the party – the ANC – through control of the state apparatus to dominate all spheres of society: all legislatures, executives in all spheres of government, the courts, the public service, the police, armed forces, and other organs of state. Not only that, but also the private sector, education, the professions, and organised civil society must be under state and ANC control.

On that score, the ANC is profoundly anti-constitutional. For the ANC, the Constitution is there mainly as a smokescreen for constitutional and political decency, but actually is an instrument for manipulation towards achieving its totalitarian goals.

Proof of this is abundant. It includes detailed studies, such as Anthea Jeffery’s 2023 Countdown to Socialism. It includes the ANC’s own Deployment Committee for judges, previously for many years under the chairmanship of none other than President Cyril Ramaphosa in his then-capacity as deputy president under former president Jacob Zuma. And it also includes the large-scale neglect of infrastructure, causing systemic failures in the state’s statutory obligations to provide, for example, access to water, affecting all, including harsh effects on poor black people, whom the ANC would pretend to count among the ones for which they care most. The list is almost endless.

The private and civic sector, including private business – big and small, organised civil society, representing the interests of the widest possible range of communities, groups and interests, segments of society, churches, the media and many more, are the indispensable building blocks for constitutionalism and for sustaining a constitutional order and guarding the freedom of the citizenry.

Checks and Balances

They are, in the constitutional paradigm, the essential checks and balances, especially in a dispensation such as present-day South Africa, in which the ANC’s project for controlling all spheres of society incarnates an unwavering assault on checks and balances, and therefore an assault on sustaining constitutionalism itself.

The ANC has gone a long way in securing control over state structures. Yet we are blessed with vibrant, vigorous, and well-organised civic and private sectors. To the extent that constitutionalism and its important pillar of checks and balances are alive and well in South Africa – and they are – we can thank mainly the private and civic sectors; not the state.

What that means is that whenever we deal with constitutionalism, it is of great importance not to confuse it with the state; that is, not to deal with it as if it is exclusively a statist matter. It is emphatically not. It is an encompassing societal matter. 

Moreover, in present-day, ANC-wounded South Africa, the civic and private sectors can play, must play, and do play, an increasing part in protecting the public against the harm caused by the failures of the government. It secures solar energy, guarantees security, and much more, and it can also manage the treatment of herds against foot-and-mouth disease, standing in and assisting Steenhuisen’s ailing department.

In general, there can be no doubt that the public has always understood the DA to be anti-totalitarian, emphatically constitutionalist, and supportive of a vigorous civic and private sector. Steenhuisen and co apparently have an opposite view, taking up the battle axe, together with the ANC, against the private and the civic sectors.

Loggerheads

This is woeful, placing Steenhuisen at loggerheads with his own party’s traditional convictions and, more importantly, against the fundamentals of constitutionalism. This is the weightiest disqualification for Steenhuisen, not only as DA leader but also for holding office as minister of agriculture or any other senior public position.

Whatever Steenhuisen’s reasons for trying to belittle his opponents with the AfriMAGA label, it appears clear that he has not thought the strategy through clearly at all. The so-called AfriMAGAs are not only an indispensable voting bloc for the DA, but crucially, are an essential community for instantiating the real de facto constitutionalism that keeps the country stable and checks the power of the totalitarian ANC.

If Steenhuisen could embrace this reality and remember which side he is on, he may yet be able to rectify his numerous grave errors of judgement.