SOUTH Africa’s Democratic Alliance (DA) leader John Steenhuisen has said he will not seek re-election as the party’s leader in April – a move that may threaten the stability of the coalition government.
The DA, South Africa’s second largest party, entered into a coalition with its arch rival the African National Congress in 2024 after the ANC lost its parliamentary majority.
Steenhuisen took over leadership of the pro-business DA in 2019 and currently serves as agriculture minister in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government.
The 49-year-old was widely expected to run again but was reportedly forced to abandon his bid because of several controversies.
“For the rest of this term of office, I will focus all of my time and energy as minister of agriculture on defeating the most devastating foot-and-mouth disease outbreak our country has ever seen,” he told a press conference.
Steenhuisen began his political career aged 22 when he was elected to the council of the the port city of Durban for the Democratic Party, the DA’s predecessor.
He rose up through the party’s local and then regional leadership before becoming leader of the party, which traditionally has a white support base, two decades later.
It was widely reported that Steenhuisen would run unopposed for the leadership at the DA’s upcoming conference.
But it seems a variety of issues led to his decision not to do so, including his fallout with another senior DA member, ex-Environment Affairs Minister Dion George, and allegations, of which he was cleared in January, that he had abused his party credit card.
He has also been criticised for his handling of the foot-and-mouth outbreak, with farmers accusing his department of being an “obstacle in a crisis”, according to South Africa’s News24 website.
The country has struggled over the past four years to contain the highly infectious virus that has now spread to most the country’s provinces – badly affecting the livestock industry.
It causes blisters inside an animal’s mouth and under their hooves, which can cause lameness and problems feeding. In dairy cattle, milk yields will be lost and the cattle’s value will be permanently reduced.
Under Steenhuisen, the DA party agreed to join the ANC as its biggest partner in the government of national unity nearly two years ago.
It was an historic moment for the country as the ANC, the party that brought in democratic rule in 1994 with Nelson Mandela and ended white-minority rule, had lost its parliamentary majority.
As expected it has been a fractious political marriage, but despite some differences they have stayed together – and Steenhuisen and Ramaphosa have shown how the partnership can work.
This was best exemplified when they supported each other in the Oval Office showdown with US President Donald Trump in May last year.
After Trump confronted the delegation with a video in support of discredited claims of a white genocide in South Africa, it was Steenhuisen who assured the US president that the majority of white farmers wanted to stay in the country.
Their performance proved to South Africans that the government of national unity was worth the bickering at home.
No DA leaders have announced their candidacies for the top post yet, but Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has been touted as a possible successor.
Steenhuisen and Hill-Lewis are close and the latter has repeatedly said he would not run against his friend, according to the TimesLive news site.