He’s no Johnny-on-the-spot

Minster of Agriculture John Steenhuisen. Picture: Nigel Sibanda John Steenhuisen’s political career was fatally damaged inside Cyril Ramaphosa’s Cabinet, at the pinnacle of the government of national unity (GNU) that he had embraced so fervently. But the DA leader’s stepping down, far from extracting his party from the political morass it is in, may create as many problems as it solves.

His exit is a crude compromise, an ad hoc and badly thought-through settlement engineered primarily to placate personalities and accommodate their personal needs. Steenhuisen departs as party leader but intends to cling to his Cabinet position as minister of agriculture. That is precisely the portfolio in which his leadership inadequacies have been most cruelly exposed and has been the catalyst for turning simmering dissatisfaction with his leadership into a showdown with disgruntled colleagues and donors.

The explanation doing the rounds inDAcircles for the cack-handed solution that has been hammered out is brutally simple. He does not want to surrender the salary and perks that come with ministerial office. Confident he could survive a leadership challenge at the April congress and with Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis his only plausible rival, making it clear he would not stand against him, Steenhuisen could make his negotiated “orderly” exit conditional on keeping agriculture.

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There are a host of reasons why the DA has become disenchanted with Steenhuisen. They all fade into insignificance when compared to his performance as minister of agriculture. Steenhuisen has failed largely because he has squandered the goodwill of farmers. It is particularly the smaller-scale commercial and family farmers – less cushioned by corporate structures and more exposed to the state’s creeping race-based rule-making on export access and water permits, which he has too readily facilitated – who feel most betrayed.

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