What John Steenhuisen’s Exit May Mean for the GNU

As both party leader and a senior Cabinet figure, John Steenhuisen was one of the most consistent internal advocates of the Government of National Unity (GNU). He treated participation in the coalition as a strategic choice rather than a temporary accommodation, repeatedly signalling that the Democratic Alliance (DA) was invested in stability, continuity, and the credibility of shared governance. That stance mattered because it reduced ambiguity. Coalition partners, markets, and the civil service could reasonably assume that the DA’s participation was not constantly up for renegotiation.

His departure, if it occurs, removes some of that certainty. While the DA remains formally committed to the Government of National Unity, future leaders are likely to approach the arrangement more conditionally.

It is no secret that there are senior figures in the DA ranks who have been sceptical of the GNU since day one. There has in addition been much internal criticism that the African National Congress (ANC) has wiped the floor with the DA in government and that the DA has few policy concessions or reforms to show for its efforts. Other DA figures are worried that Steenhuisen’s own appalling performance in the agriculture ministry has dented the DA’s image of governing better than the ANC.

Any leadership transition away from Steenhuisen will unfold against the backdrop of an approaching local election cycle, where incentives favour differentiation, sharper opposition messaging, and visible distance from the ANC. All of that will create new trigger points for a possible GNU break-up. At the very least under these conditions coalition support may increasingly be framed as transactional, subject to specific policy gains, electoral calculations, or defined timelines.

The result is an increase in the scope for friction within the GNU. Local elections intensify zero-sum dynamics. Shared credit becomes harder to sell to voters, while policy compromise carries greater political cost. As a result, disputes that might previously have been managed quietly inside cabinet or inter-party forums are more likely to surface publicly, raising the risk of brinkmanship and withdrawal threats being used as leverage.

A Steenhuisen exit also has implications on the ANC side of the coalition. Within the ANC, there are actors who have remained sceptical of the GNU from the outset, viewing it as a constraint on patronage, policy autonomy, and ideological control. Steenhuisen functioned, in effect, as their strongest counterweight within the DA, a leader whose positioning made it harder to unravel the coalition from either side without clear costs.

With that anchor gone, sceptical ANC factions may see greater room to test the coalition’s limits, which may meet with harsher responses from a new DA leadership less personally invested in the GNU, reducing the political price of confrontation, whether over appointments, economic reform, or the pace of institutional change.

This does not imply an imminent break, but it does mean the coalition is now more exposed to cumulative strain.

Pierneef was one of South Africa's greatest artists, known for his paintings of South African vistas. This column named after him aims to do something similar - sketch the broad vistas of South Africa's domestic landscape.