JOHN STEENHUISEN: The rise and rise of the DA

When it comes to Business Day columnist Peter Bruce, the more things change, the more they stay the same. If we went back in time just a few months it would have been difficult to imagine a more profound shift in SA politics than the one we are now living through.

Even though they may now claim otherwise, 36, 24 or even 12 months ago few pundits, including Bruce, believed support for the ANC was on the verge of collapsing from 57% to 40%. Few believed the DA was back on a growth trajectory after the party polled at just 16% following the debacle of the 2019 election, and none of them had any faith that the DA was on the verge of both becoming a key bulwark in national government against radicalism and setting a new benchmark for delivery in national government. 

I know that none of the analysts or pundits believed this would happen because I was there. As far back as April 2023, in the speech I delivered following my re-election as DA leader with 83% support from party members drawn from all quarters of the country, I spoke about DA internal polling that showed ANC support eroding rapidly “to around 40%”, and preparing my party for the implications of this shift.

At the time I pledged that under my stewardship, the DA would do “absolutely everything in our power” to prevent a radical “doomsday coalition from taking power”. I added that what South Africans wanted “is for the DA to lead. And lead is what we shall do”. The formation of the MK party in December 2023 only added further impetus to the momentous shift that was now clearly visible on the horizon to anyone willing to put aside their own prejudices.

Unfortunately, Bruce was not one of those people. As recently as December 2023 he wrote that for the ANC to lose power, “it would have to drop way below 46%, which won’t happen”, To be fair, he was not alone: I’d venture to guess that not a single analyst believed the forecast I made in April 2023 about the unmissable role the DA would soon have to play in keeping a radical coalition out of power and restoring the hope that SA can be rescued.

The rest, as they say, is history. When voters called on us to step up on May 29 2024 to rescue SA, the DA not only delivered on our pledge to the electorate that we were ready to rise to the challenge of preventing doomsday, but DA ministers, deputy ministers and office bearers at national level, as well as our MECs in KwaZulu-Natal and in the DA-led Western Cape government, have delivered with distinction.

From home affairs to communications, basic education, public works, agriculture and environment, DA executives are working hard every day to show that the more voters trust the party with turning around broken parts of government, the brighter SA’s future becomes. 

Even in this context, Bruce has sadly reverted to some of his most worn-out tropes about the DA. Earlier this month, he complained about the DA’s economic policy, though he was consulted on, and celebrated, that same policy in the lead-up to the 2024 election (“DA still needs to find its true colours”, June 5).

A week later he took aim at the DA’s senior leaders in what may be his most confused piece of writing ever (“Tough as nails: Zille’s unyielding grit would pull Joburg right”, June 12). After acknowledging that the DA may be able to win Johannesburg with an outright majority in the 2026 local elections, and admitting that the DA “in both the forthcoming local and national elections could take larger shares of the vote than the ANC itself”, he again turned to the broken record he has played since 2019 by calling for leadership changes to a party that is ascendant. (A recent analysis shows that while the ANC has lost support in 60% of by-elections since the 2024 national poll, the DA has grown in 64% of by-elections). 

Bruce’s logic is a mess of contradictions. Is it not the incumbent leadership of the party, as constituted through the federal executive and federal council by congress delegates, that have put the party in a position to “take larger shares of the vote than the ANC itself” in both Johannesburg and elsewhere? Is it not this very same leadership team that has delivered what was once unthinkable, by turning the DA into the second-largest party of national government?  

The reality is that Bruce was wrong that the “blessed moment” of Cyril Ramaphosa’s election as ANC leader in 2017 would magically cure SA’s ills. He was wrong that the DA would not recover after Mmusi Maimane walked off the job. He was wrong about the breakthrough prospects of his former close colleague, Songezo Zibi (his party ended up with a paltry 0.42% of the vote in 2024). And he was wrong that ANC support crashing in 2024 “wouldn’t happen”.

Given this track record, it is really not possible to draw any conclusion other than that Bruce’s animosity towards DA leadership is personal. Perhaps precisely because we have so consistently proven him wrong, he feels the need to keep digging himself ever deeper into this hole. 

Peter, it’s okay. We all make mistakes. No-one will hold it against you if you acknowledge that you did not believe the DA would ever become a party of government in the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, nationally — and, soon, in major cities across the country. In fact, I would bet that most readers would welcome a bit of honesty from the pundits who so spectacularly failed to call the outcome of the 2024 election. If a DA leader was that bad at their job — well, Bruce would be first in line calling for their head.

While it is sad that Bruce’s writings are now so coloured by apparent personal animus that he has little ability left to see the wood for the trees, I might as well venture a further scenario that he is likely to dismiss just as quickly as the others. It is this: under its duly elected leadership team the DA’s representation across municipal, provincial and national government has now reached critical mass, and in the 2026 local government elections the DA is set to emerge as the single largest party in the majority of the country’s eight metro municipalities.  

The same DA that was polling at just 16% in late 2019 when I took on the role as interim leader has not only already achieved what was once unthinkable by becoming a party of local, provincial and national government, but is now poised to overtake the ANC in 2026 to become the biggest party in most of the major cities in SA. 

When that happens, I certainly won’t be expecting any flowers from Bruce. But I would settle for some honest reflection on the remarkable and inspiring road trodden by the party I love. 

• Steenhuisen is federal leader of the DA.