John Steenhuisen, TV celebrity, becomes DA Leader
John Steenhuisen has been made the Interim Leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA). It’s the most unsurprising political selection of the year, and completes major preordained moves by the party.
Internal elections are irrelevant. It’s power that matters, and that belongs to the faction within the DA that’s led by Helen Zille. In case you’ve been suntanning in a dry dam in the Karoo, she’s the newish Federal Council Chairperson (a position for which one prerequisite must’ve been herĀ threatening to sue and jail me for reporting corruption to her).
Party perversion perverts externally. The long-term consequence is that local and national elections aren’t choices in the purest sense but rather votes for fixed options.
This age of fake democracy requires, at the minimum, our criticism and opinion as tools towards truth.
PREMIER ALAN WINDE
The “democratic” part of the DA’s name hasn’t stopped it from mocking democracy.
Maintaining control of the DA’s only provincial domain, and the City of Cape Town where Parliament resides, was essential. It’s the foundation of the DA’s national plans, their headquarters and Helen Zille’s home.
It was decided, at least 8 months before internal elections held in 2018, that Alan Winde would replace Zille as Western Cape Premier. He was her chosen one.
Winde’s weakness of character deserves special mention. He’s seemingly of no ideological belief. His mediocrity has long kept him in sizable salary. He would have worked well with the party’s democratic socialists, James Selfe and figurehead Mmusi Maimane, if the liberals hadn’t defeated them. He doesn’t have to shift position to serve usurper Zille because she’s his old boss; still Zille no matter what disguise she dresses in for funders and selfishness.
Winde is a career politician whose likely satisfied to move no higher than Premier but stay there as long as possible. All that’s required is for him to never rock the apple tree, and maintain cover-up of the corruption that he’s involved in with Zille and others.
As much as Western Cape Leader DA Bonginkosi Madikizela is accused of being servant to “Madam Zille”, so Winde is too.
COLOURFUL SIDEKICKS
DA provincial leader Bonginkosi Madikizela, along with Alan Winde and MEC Local Government Anton Bredell, were Helen Zille’s henchman in the Western Cape where she was previously Premier. Madikizela, like Maimane, was her protege.
Madikizela, a previous ANC member and now one of the DA’s most arrogant figures, wants more prominence than his DA Western Cape Leader allows, but not as much as he wants to be obedient. Madikizela will be acutely aware that as quickly as Maimane’s disgrace was organised, so could his.Ā It’s thought for consideration when one’s salary tops a million rand annually. Possibly that’s why, last year, he resigned as a competitor to Winde, and, this week, as opponent to Steenhuisen.
Another sidekick is Ivan Meyer, Western Cape loyalist to the Zille faction. His ‘selection’ as DA Interim Federal Leader today was as unsurprising as Steenhuisen’s. Whereas that should be one of the most power positions in the party, in effect it’s tokenism. After all, Athol Trollip had that position but wanted to be DA Federal Council leader (similar in name but separate position), and quit after Zille took it.
At the press conference today, Ivan Meyer stated strongly that the DA believes in the rule of law yet he was one of the earliest that ignored me when I reported DA corruption.
MADAM HELEN ZILLE
The second prearranged move was more risky, and even with fruition, remains dangerous for the DA’s future.
Helen Zille returned from political wilderness to take the Chair of the Federal Council (where the biggest power in the party resides). That strategy seems to have begun with Zille making controversial statements and criticisms. Liberal organisations and media supported her, making then Leader Mmusi Maimane their whipping boy. That flowed into direct support for Zille’s takeover of the DA.
The same media that ignores DA corruption has played a role in installing her.
POLITICS AS THE CULTURE OF CELEBRITY
It’s impossible to understate the irrationality of supporting personalities instead of the policies and actions of political parties. Unfortunately, celebrity culture rules, and seems likely to be our future.
Marketing made the unknown Mmusi Maimane into one of South Africa’s most well known politicians so it’s appropriate that it destroyed him. However, its disturbing that politics is so easily manipulated, substance replaced with that celebrity which television brings.

The Western Cape Hawks are involved in a cover-up protecting the DA. Nevertheless, this is one of my affidavits against DA corruption
Zille is a media force bound to give reassurance to conservative white voters and white Western supporters. However, the Media has conveniently forgotten that she installed black puppets in pursuit of power. After only gaining 4% of the national black vote, she now does an about-turn, becoming a liberal that doesn’t believe in identity politics. It’s unlikely that someone her age has had epiphany yet the Media is failing to label her as a hypocrite even though that’s the biggest part of her.
The DA is absolutely aware that television rules, making John Steenhuisen the only viable candidate as leader. As the previous Chief Whip in Parliament, he was guaranteed to win sound bites by aiming at the lowest hanging fruit which the ANC is. He’s a man of no accomplishment except party loyalty. The truth of his character is that he has repeatedly ignored my complaints about his party’s corruption. Like the rest, he puts his salary ahead of the people he’s suppose to serve, making him a perfect fit for the current state of politics against the Public.
THE FUTURE OF THE DA
Favouritism for the Cape faction could upset leaders of heavyweight provinces, KZN and Gauteng. I expect there’ll be more defections to the ANC (or Mmusi Maimane, if he and Herman Mashaba start a party) though that may happen closer to the 2021 Local Government Elections. Of course, the viability of salary will influence most moral decisions.
If the DA follows its proclaimed new liberal role, it would have to stop working with the fake communism and honest racial hatred of the EFF. Without that coalition, the DA will lose two of the country’s four biggest cities, Johannesburg and Tshwane. The knockdown effect will be less salaried positions on offer for loyalty. Disgruntlement among the ranks is guaranteed.
The coloured community, an essential Cape electorate, seems to be as divided as usual, but there’s been massive backlash from blacks online. The DA won’t be destroyed but that may become a seed of rot that requires some limbs severed; the blue tree made smaller in anti-Miyagi style.
In a country that’s overwhelmingly black, four whites and one coloured now occupy the DA’s top five positions (Natasha Mazzone was recently made the DA’s Chief Whip in Parliament).
I doubt many will buy into today’s attempt by John Steenhuisen’s to remould the DA into an anti-poverty party. As for him saying that the DA was no longer a party of pointing fingers, you should read what happened only two days before. Some will laugh out loud at his claim that Mmusi Maimane wasn’t pushed out, and at his repetition of the old mantra that the DA is the only non-racial option for South Africans (sadly, there’s none). Considering his face-to-face neglect of Knysna where the DA leadership is mired in crime, his promise to address the needs of communities directly is bullshit too. The DA never listens!
It doesn’t matter how much fertiliser they’re farting, logically, the DA shouldn’t grow. They’re more likely to be dented by their hypocrisy and the awkward fact that politics in South Africa is, ultimately, identity mathematics (80% black vs 8% white and 9% coloured).
Personally, I’m hoping that the DA will be righteously damaged for their subversion of democracy and participation in corruption.
But I’m a realist. Money matters, especially when it buys advertising. Biased media, for the most part, remains on their side. The DA is unlikely to find itself in the deepest hole it deserves.
The election for permanent DA Party Leader and Federal Leader will happen in 2020.
For now we have John Steenhuisen, probably another corrupt dick instead of being the Dick King of the DA. But he must be given a chance. Consequently, I’m using how he handles corruption as his litmus test, and whether he or Zille is the real party leader. I’ve emailed him my summary of DA corruption and a new complaint against Premier Alan Winde.