Can the DA stop Steenhuisen’s political war?
· Citizen
Not since Prince Andrew’s infamous BBC Newsnight train wreck has a public figure set his own career ablaze with such blithe obliviousness.
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John Steenhuisen’s interview on News24 this week was an act of public self-immolation, excruciating to watch. The key difference is that the subsequent damage done to the monarchy by Andrew’s disclosures was inadvertent. By contrast, the potential damage to the DA and its participation in the government of national unity (GNU) arising from Steenhuisen’s allegations is calculated and deliberate.
The BBC interview finished Andrew. He ceased to be a functioning prince, was stripped of royal patronages and military honours and was cast out of his long-suffering family’s fold. He was left financially exposed and, in any ordinary sense, entirely unemployable.
Steenhuisen – having already slid down the political food chain from DA leader to Cabinet minister, and finally to deputy minister – now faces similarly bleak prospects. It is difficult to see any future for him in his party.
In a single appearance, he has come perilously close to defaming Tony Leon, not only a formidable former DA leader but also his mentor and the godfather of his daughter. He has slagged off Geordin Hill-Lewis, his successor as national leader and the close friend who, until now, had done everything possible to keep Steenhuisen’s faltering career afloat.
Finally, through sly insinuations of impropriety, he has also gifted the ANC and the DA’s opposition rivals a massive brush with which to tar the party in the run-up to the November local government elections.
Under normal circumstances, such a mutinous fusillade against his own comrades would have led to Steenhuisen’s immediate eviction, at the DA’s request, from the GNU executive, and his permanent exclusion from any meaningful future role in the party. It would have left a man with well-advertised personal financial difficulties bereft of employment prospects.
The News24 interaction was less of an interview. Hard questions were not asked. Steenhuisen’s many exaggerations, insinuations and sometimes dishonest statements were left unchallenged. For example, Steenhuisen now admits to what he steadfastly denied: surrendering the DA leadership to secure the sinecure of agriculture minister.
The language is excoriating and theatrical. Hill-Lewis, Steenhuisen says, “gave my head to the hyenas”. The hyenas in question are the supposedly “baying mob” of “AfriMAGA” zealots.
Steenhuisen lashes out at Leon for “relentlessly” driving negative foot-and-mouth disease publicity against him. Then comes some spectacular close-quarters knife work. Steenhuisen accuses Leon’s company, Resolve Communications, of exploiting its “proximity to DA leaders” to set up meetings between DA ministers in the GNU and its clients.
The formulation is poisonous because it deliberately blurs the line between ordinary lobbying and the corrupt purchase of influence through privileged insider access. And the effect was exactly what Steenhuisen undoubtedly intended.
The ANC called the allegations “damning”, saying the alleged conduct amounted to an attempt by Leon to “capture the state”. ActionSA called on President Cyril Ramaphosa, the Public Service Commission, and the Public Protector to investigate.
But Steenhuisen’s fire-bombing of the DA was not a political suicide note. It was a ransom demand. Unless the party negotiates a ceasefire, he can – and will -continue to wreak havoc. Far better, then, to placate him. He is very keen, one hears, on an ambassadorship to a middle- to upper-income country.