This week new Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Geordin Hill-Lewis wrote to President Cyril Ramaphosa requesting changes to the DA’s seats in the Government of National Unity (GNU) Cabinet, headlined by demoting his predecessor as DA leader, John Steenhuisen. Ramaphosa is reportedly weighing it positively, with changes possibly taking effect before the end of June, though no final decision has been announced.

The proposed moves include:

Request: Steenhuisen from Minister of Agriculture down to Deputy Minister of Trade, Industry, and Competition.

Our read: A soft landing for the former DA leader into a portfolio where he will likely disappear into the background.

Request: Willie Aucamp from the environment portfolio to Minister of Agriculture.

Our read: This is really important. In a narrow sense Aucamp needs to reverse all of Steenhuisen’s foot and mouth disease policies so that 80% of South Africa’s cattle can receive vaccine and booster shots in a single narrow window of time. He also has to repair the DA’s relationships with farmers where trust has been badly damaged and with the broader DA constituency tied to farmers and related industries. The importance cannot be overstated as, if he fails at either of these tasks, a growing body of voters will increasingly come to wonder whether the DA in government can fix South Africa’s problems any better than the African National Congress (ANC) can.

Request: David Maynier, Western Cape Education Minister to Minister of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment.

Our read: This is also very important to demonstrate that the DA in government can deliver better outcomes than the ANC. His big test is going to be blocking the proposed Hopefield chemicals and fuel plant, through which the European Union (EU) wishes to meet its environmental mandates by wrecking a pristine area of the Western Cape. If he fails at that, then further DA voter alienation will follow.

Request: Alexandra Abrahams to Deputy Minister of Electricity and Energy (Steenhuisen takes her old deputy-trade seat).

Our read: Like many of the DA’s deputies, very few people knew who she was or what she did. No real importance to the move therefore, although there is an opportunity to make plain how the DA intends to deliver the megawatts needed to raise South Africa’s growth rate to emerging-market norms.

Request: Yusuf Cassim to Deputy Minister of Higher Education and Training.

Our read: No real importance.

Request: Jack Bloom, DA’s shadow MEC for Health in Gauteng to Deputy Minister of Water and Sanitation.

Our read: Bloom has done extremely well in driving health issues in Gauteng and if he brings that same methodology to water and sanitation he could create a very favourable impression of the DA in government.

The DA’s challenge in government is perhaps best understood in terms of the thesis of what regime change entails. It is always a two-step process, in which society first loses its belief that the old regime can defend its interests and then, in step two, society gains the belief that the new regime could.

South Africa has in the main completed much of step one, which is why the ANC polls at around 40% nationally and much lower than that in Gauteng. But step two has not been completed, which is why the DA still polls at around 25%.

While some of the DA’s Cabinet picks have been adequate, the bulk have either disappeared into obscurity or, as in the case of Steenhuisen, inflicted damage on the economy and the reputation of the DA. As a consequence, the vote-share balance between the ANC and the DA still looks much like it did in May of 2024. Siviwe Gwarube, the schools minister, has also had a nightmare term of near-absolute failure, but the sensitivities around firing her, given that she was elected as a Deputy Federal Chair of the party a few weeks ago, were likely too great to pull the trigger.

Assuming the deputies remain obscure and Steenhuisen and Gwarube stop causing damage, the test for Aucamp and Maynier, but also Bloom, will be to materially shift the perception, in as far as such a perception is now developing, that the DA is at best underwhelming in government and at worst no better than the ANC. Fail at that and the DA will come face to face with its key risk and competitor.

This is not the ANC, which is essentially hapless now and will remain that (unless it picks Patrice Motsepe as its new leader). The DA’s real competitor is the enclaves into which South Africa is fragmenting as the state fails in its responsibilities and people begin to take these over for themselves. Where communities give up on politicians and take to their enclaves, the effect is to cast party politics into a degree of irrelevance that will deepen with time.

These enclaves are not just the middle-class redoubts that now offer such a sound and likely sustainable future to the well-educated and well-employed. The illicit economy and the shadow state that has grown from it reveals exactly the same phenomenon, just in a different facet of society. So, too, does the growing importance of gangs on South Africa’s urban peripheries and traditional leaders in former homeland areas. The whole Union, as this newspaper has written, is breaking up and this is the single-most important trend in South Africa today.

If Ramaphosa accedes to the DA’s Cabinet reshuffle request, the test will therefore be whether the DA can shift the perception that it can govern nationally better than the ANC – and that there is a viable alternative, therefore, to the fragmentation of the Union. The ANC’s strategy will be to continue to sabotage the DA, given that the ANC now privately concedes that, again short of Motsepe, it cannot reform and should therefore act instead to pull the DA down to its level in the hope that, come 2029, voters won’t be able to see much of difference between the two.

It will not take very long to know whether the DA’s new Cabinet picks can shape the impression that the party has what it takes to the turn the country around from the Union Buildings.