Leaving is never easy but look at us now

If you had said to most South Africans in 2019 that the Democratic Alliance would partner with the African National Congress in government in 2024 and that in the process it would deliver important and positive change to South Africans, most would have laughed at the prospect.

If you had said that the DA, then polling at 16% in the wake of an election setback in 2019 and with its then leader walking off the job, would be the only established party to increase its vote in 2024 and that today it would be polling at 30%, they would probably have thought you had lost your marbles.

If you had said that DA members would be sworn in as ministers, deputy ministers, deputy speaker, chairpersons and portfolio committee chairs in the National Assembly and National Council of Provinces, as well as MECs and deputy speaker in KwaZulu-Natal — in addition to retaining outright control of the Western Cape — you would have been accused of over-imbibing the party Kool-Aid.

But this is the reality today. The DA has shifted from the periphery to the centre of governance and has begun to change the way South Africa works.

The DA is bringing positive change wherever it governs and it is governing in more and more places in South Africa, including in critical areas of national government.

This is the platform provided by stable leadership, a clear focus on the things that matter to South Africans — growth, jobs, services and security — and a willingness to work with other parties in the fraught business of coalition building and management.

Not long ago, it was unthinkable that the leader of the DA would ever walk up the steps to the Union Buildings.

For 30 years under democracy, and for many decades before that, the DA and its predecessors fought to one day carry its vision of building an open opportunity society for all into national government. 

With 1.7% of the vote in 1994 and just seven seats in the National Assembly, that moment seemed unimaginable. Instead, 1994’s result was a flashback to the early days of the Progressive Federal Party in 1959 when, for 13 years, its only member of parliament was the redoubtable Helen Suzman.

The DA strove for this goal because it was only by gaining access to the levers of national power that it could ever hope to build a more prosperous, fair and successful country.

But to get there called for leadership that would do the hard work of converting the DA from a party of mere opposition into a governing force strong enough to bend the arc of history — away from a SA marked by joblessness, decline and despair and towards economic growth, rising prosperity and renewed hope. 

Very few people believed the party would ever manage this journey. There were even some in the party who resisted the opportunity to take it into the Government of National Unity (GNU), preferring a confidence-and-supply arrangement, whereby it would support the ANC on crucial votes such as the budget and no-confidence motions to prevent its collapse but would not hold cabinet posts. It was an understandable point of view as the DA had spent its life in opposition and a bold change was on the table.

But with much effort, by those inside and patriots outside the party, a GNU was negotiated. And South Africa is the better for it.

‘History has thrust upon the leadership of this country the tremendous responsibility to turn our country away from its present direction of conflict and confrontation,’ said FW de Klerk on 2 February 1990. ‘Only we, the leaders of our peoples, can do it. The eyes of responsible governments across the world are focused on us. The hopes of millions of South Africans are centred on us. The future of Southern Africa depends on us. We dare not falter or fail.’ 

South Africa is today not the success that de Klerk or Nelson Mandela hoped for. We were going in the wrong direction. Unemployment sat at 33.5% in the second quarter of 2024, up from 32.9% in the first quarter of 2024. The expanded unemployment rate was a staggering 42.6%. For the 15-24 age group, the rate hovered just under 60%.It is only now, under the GNU, that this frightening number has begun to turn around.

This has not happened by accident. SA’s financial improvement over the past year is the direct result of the DA’s decision to draw a line in the sand over the 2025 budget. 

We rejected the tax-and-spend ANC plan, which would have pushed VAT higher while continuing to fund a bloated civil service. 

We are seeing the reform agenda, which the DA has supported, starting to gain traction with Eskom and Transnet and we are taking on bad practices that damage delivery, such as cadre deployment.

Note the progress my colleague Siviwe Gwarube has made in education, opening up early childhood development to 150 000 more children, improving and digitising classrooms and upskilling 7 000 grade R teachers. 

Or Solly Malatsi’s work in reducing the cost of mobile data, now down 51% in the past 10 years and Leon Schreiber at home affairs in halving illegal border crossings, clearing the visa and permit backlog and delivering the highest number of smart IDs ever in a single year. 

Dean Macpherson’s stint at infrastructure and public works has so far saved R8.5 billion in public money through restructuring and he is redeveloping underused military bases to become sites of investment and job creation. 

The creation of new markets for SA fruit and wine exports and stepping up the long-term fight against foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) through vaccine production and importation can all be added to the positive side of the DA’s ledger in government, just as forestry, fisheries and the environment is working to unlock more value for rural and fishing communities while rebuilding the Kruger National Park following the devastating floods.

The DA has had to deal with problems inherited from the previous regime, made worse by a lack of timely prior action. South Africa, for example, lost its foot-and-mouth-free status in 2019. 

To crime I would add the costs of SA’s foreign policy, which has been a tax on attempts to expand its global trade and investment footprint. South African foreign policy has strayed from Mandela’s intention to put human rights first. In a world of great shifts and challenges, we have to take care to be on the right side of the line that divides prosperity from poverty, democracy from authoritarianism and the national interest from radical interest groups.

The DA is putting people at the centre of its actions; and the DA at the centre of the political spectrum, where the fight is about preventing harm and ensuring prosperity, not about ideological shibboleths and polemical cul-de-sacs.

We continue to see that the positives outweigh the downsides. The days of the DA being a party that only shouted at others from the comfort of the sidelines are over. We have a responsibility to get stuck in, fix the country we all love and stay the course.

Leadership is especially difficult in the social media age, with its constant buffeting by waves of information and disinformation, facts and fake news and ‘nattering nabobs of negativism’. This makes it more difficult to keep an eye on the long-term strategic enterprise.

Good leaders have to not only make a difference but do so in a manner that benefits a great number of people. 

Leaders have to maintain qualities of humility, empathy, a willingness to surround themselves with good people, strategic vision and, of course, energy, stamina and communication skills.

The GNU is a transformative opportunity for SA, one that represents a change of historical direction. In dismissing the GNU’s value, the costs of an alternative populist outcome — a Doomsday Coalition — are sometimes overlooked. This option would indubitably have taken all the economic indicators into the red.

Against all the odds, the DA, once viewed as little more than a regional party and regarded as too arrogant and oppositional to play any national role, now carries the hopes and dreams of its 3.5 million voters into national government.

Reform, I am frequently reminded, is a marathon without a finishing line. There is much more to do. But there is no doubt that SA’s economy is on the up after more than a decade of rapid decline.

That South Africa today is a profoundly better country than it was on the eve of the 2024 general elections is because we delivered on the pledge to turn the DA into a party of national government, which enabled talented colleagues to demonstrate that the DA delivers for all.

I believe the key reason why the DA is now polling at historically high levels and winning by-elections in areas where it traditionally struggled, is because the party’s work in the GNU has proven that we care about all South Africans from all backgrounds.

This diversity is reflected in our leadership, from our ministerial team down.

The great Indian opening batsman Sunil Gavaskar said: ‘One should retire from sport or public life when people say why and not when they say why not.’ I have other opportunities and challenges on which to focus, not least in doubling down on addressing the FMD crisis.

The next duly elected DA leader can rely on my full support but they will be given the space to lead the party as they see fit.

As in sport and business, a true test of political leadership is knowing when the right moment has come to let go.

John Steenhuisen is the outgoing leader of the Democratic Alliance