Steenhuisen Exit Reshapes GNU Maths, Handing ANC Some Powerful Options

When John Steenhuisen surrendered the leadership of the Democratic Alliance (DA) earlier today, he handed the African National Congress (ANC) a broad set of strategic options around how to proceed with government in South Africa. If the party picks carefully it could use those to undermine its blue rival.

Steenhuisen was not only the DA leader but one of the original architects of the Government of National Unity (GNU). His personal investment in the arrangement, and his willingness to absorb criticism from within his own party in order to sustain it, gave the coalition a degree of continuity and predictability. With his exit from the leadership, he has virtually extinguished what political power he wielded and as a consequence that personal ballast has fallen away. The GNU now rests less on individual relationships and more on institutional calculations.

For the ANC, this matters. The DA side of the GNU will now be shaped by successors who are not tied to the original compromise that produced the coalition – or the vested interests of earning a government salary. They are likely to place greater emphasis on conditional participation, clearer reform benchmarks, and visible policy concessions. In practical terms, this makes the DA a less pliable coalition partner. The tolerance for open-ended accommodation has narrowed.

This shift has different implications for different factions inside the ANC.

For moderates who worked closely with Steenhuisen, often quietly and incrementally, their range of available options to sustain the GNU has tightened. Steenhuisen provided a reliable counterpart who could manage internal DA dissent to keep the coalition stable. His much reduced power removes a key intermediary, making it harder to sustain the GNU through personal trust alone.

For ANC radicals, by contrast, Steenhuisen’s exit presents an opportunity. Those who opposed the GNU from the outset, and who favour a break towards the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MK) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), will now find it easier to engineer conflicts with the DA. A tougher, less patient DA leadership increases the risk of deadlock, which radicals will seek to exploit as justification for abandoning the GNU altogether.

There is also a third camp within the ANC whose position is now strengthened. These are figures who think the ANC miscalculated and that the GNU has granted the DA excessive prominence and credibility. They see poll data showing how DA credibility has lifted as a party of government, how narrow the gap between DA and ANC support has become, and how supportive their own base is of the DA’s participation in the government. All the old public fears of the DA as a racist and elitist party, that caused ANC voters to keep their distance, have faded.

This camp’s preference is certainly not for the reincorporation of the EFF and MK but for an ANC minority government that would allow the ANC to govern issue by issue, negotiating support in Parliament as needed, and thereby reclaiming control of the country in the mind of the public and denying such a platform to the DA. It is an argument that from an ANC perspective has a lot of merit.

In this sense, the GNU has entered a more fluid phase. The coalition still exists, but its centre of gravity has shifted. Where it was once underpinned by personal commitment and strategic patience, it now depends more heavily on hard bargaining and explicit trade-offs.

While most attention has focussed on what this means for the DA leadership, for the ANC the options created are arguably even broader and the party now has its pick of doubling down on coalition government, seeking alignment with the EFF or MK, or pivoting to minority government. It is a very powerful position to be in.