Load shedding

DA interim federal executive chairperson Helen Zille and the party’s interim leader John Steenhuisen. Image via: Veli Nhlapo

The DA’s road ahead with John Steenhuisen behind the wheel

Columnist Jan Jan Joubert outlines the immediate future of the official opposition party.

Load shedding

DA interim federal executive chairperson Helen Zille and the party’s interim leader John Steenhuisen. Image via: Veli Nhlapo

It’s out with the old, in with the new for the DA, which, after this weekend, has a new leader in John Steenhuisen and a new federal chairperson in Ivan Meyer to go with their new chairperson of the federal executive, Helen Zille, and their new chief whip, Natasha Mazzone.

The question now, as that great Bolshevik Vladimir Lenin once put it, is what is to be done because the DA is arguably at the third worst juncture of its entire history.

It is not as bad as 2001, when the Marthinus van Schalkwyk grouping broke away and floor-crossing left the DA running exactly three municipalities in the whole country.

It is also not as bad as after the 2004 elections, when the party was almost bankrupt.

Not the worst time, but close enough for the DA

But the current situation is bad enough as it stands. For the first time in its history, the DA lost support in this year’s election, which is an indication of how dire the party’s situation is, and how much it needs direction.

From its 2016 high, the party has stumbled from disaster to disaster over the past two years.

The much vaunted policy writing process failed when first Gavin Davis quit as policy head and as MP, and then a few months later his successor, Gwen Ngwenya, did the same.

Both cited indecisiveness at leadership level and lack of policy generation capacity within the party as the reasons for their resignations.

Whereas the DA had for many years built an image of a disciplined party which was run at such a professional and slick way that it made its supporters feel proud and almost superior, several disasters over the last two years have shattered that image.

Lack of clear policy direction

The party has been tearing itself apart with every internal disagreement playing out in public in the nastiest possible way.

The lack of coherent policy direction led to a lacklustre election campaign with the DA losing five seats in the National Assembly. The whole basic tenet of the 2019 DA election campaign was to grow its black support, especially in towns and cities. But the campaign failed miserably, with the party’s black support actually showing a small decline.

Adding to the misery, although the DA retained its high support levels among Coloured, Indian and white English speaking voters, it lost about 250 000 white Afrikaans votes to the Freedom Front Plus – votes which may prove very hard to regain in the absence of Patricia de Lille, the only Afrikaans politician with mass appeal in South Africa.

Since the election, the party’s decline has accelerated. It has lost many seats in by-elections. These included predominantly Indian wards in Benoni and Pietermaritzburg, a predominantly Coloured Afrikaans rural ward in Vredendal, and predominantly white Afrikaans wards in Stilfontein, Potchefstroom and Bethal.

Maimane, Mashaba and Trollip pack their bags

If there is one stroke of luck the DA can thank its lucky stars for, it will be that since the general election it has not had to fight a by-election in Pretoria, where the mood against the DA among many white Afrikaans voters is ugly.

The only provinces where the party seems on an even keel as far as voter support is concerned are the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.   

And then, in the last three weeks, the party’s leader, Mmusi Maimane, federal chairperson, Athol Trollip, and its only metropolitan mayor with mass public support, Herman Mashaba, all resigned within two days citing their opinion that the party was moving to the right.

An annus horriblis in anyone’s language.  

A look to the future: DA with Steenhuisen

It is therefore unlikely that Steenhuisen, Meyer and Zille popped much champagne after Sunday’s triumph. And Steenhuisen, surely the DA leader with political nous like no other, lost no time to show initial leadership and direction.

He listed the party’s major problems and injected some much needed passion in declaring his commitment to correcting them and restoring the party to growth and winning ways.

Importantly, he promised to make the DA a positive, pro-active political party which will focus less on what others do wrong and more on why its policies will improve people’s lives and the running of the country.

But the DA has a mountain to climb, and many decisions to make. Firstly, the new leadership will only serve for five months, until the DA’s federal congress, when delegates will elect a leadership to serve a full term. It will therefore be hard for the new leadership to really make a difference.

Rumour has it that the previous head of policy, Gwen Ngwenya, whose brilliance is universally acknowledged, may be returning to the position.

It remains to be seen whether, this time around, shadow ministers would be consulted earlier in the process, ensuring a more participatory, bottom-up approach than the top-down approach which characterised the two recent failed policy processes.

A new battle brewing between Steenhuisen, Meyer and Zille

Another potentially huge challenge is policy differences and the possibility of eventual personal tension between Steenhuisen, Meyer and Zille. The power dynamic is odd – there can be little doubt that had Zille run for the party leadership, she would have won.

This leaves Steenhuisen in an invidious position as a party leader who would have to be extra careful not to unleash the wrath of his supposed underling, the federal executive chairperson.

It is an underling with whom Steenhuisen and Meyer differ on two extremely important issues, about which party policy will be set after the DA policy conference early in the year. 

The first is the role of race and racial differentiation in DA policy. Zille is on record that she wants race to not feature at all in the DA or in its policies, including its policies on redress for the racially based policies of the past which caused the inequality defining South African society.

Steenhuisen and Meyer believe race remains central to the everyday South African political narrative and to ban discussion on it would be out of touch with reality.

Whoever loses the battle on race at the policy conference will be in a very weak position to lead.

The problem with EFF coalitions

The second issue on which Zille differs from Steenhuisen and Meyer is the DA’s relationship with the EFF, with which the DA and other opposition parties are in cooperative agreement against the ANC in almost all municipal councils where no party obtained a majority.

These include the cities of Johannesburg and Tshwane, the towns of Thabazimbi and Modimolle (Nylstroom) and several rural municipalities in KwaZulu-Natal.

Zille does not want the DA to cooperate with the EFF in governments at all, citing ideological differences. Steenhuisen and Meyer believe that tough as cooperation with the EFF is for the DA, it serves the interests of its voters by preventing an ANC/EFF coalition, which would surely be any DA voter’s last preference.

Yet again, whoever loses the coalition debate will be in a very weak position to lead the DA.

Two further huge potential problems which will be much tougher to address directly are the position of the DA’s progressive (or left, or woke) wing, which now has no representation at top leadership level.

If the DA does not want to lose those voters, they would have to feel considered and represented rather than resented at top leadership level.

The issue of race

But perhaps the most poignant aspect of the last three weeks has been the silence of black DA members and public representatives.

Much as seven of the DA’s nine provincial leaders are black, there are now no black leaders at the top level in the DA. And it is an open question how much power those black provincial leaders have.

Without exception, they supported and campaigned for Trollip in his failed contest against Zille to become chairperson of the federal executive, but their provinces ignored rejected their leadership and voted Zille in regardless.

All in all, the new DA leadership has its work cut out. One thing we know is that the new leadership will be more decisive than Maimane was. Choices will be made, and what they will be will determine whether the DA will remain as dominant in the opposition landscape as it has been since its founding in 2000.