German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once warned: “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
The governing partner of the ANC in the government of national unity (GNU), the DA should have been careful over the years that it was fighting the ANC as the official opposition that it did not become that which it feared the most about the ANC: a factional party which loses sight of its main goal of existence, becoming just a tool of the dominant faction.
DA federal chair Helen Zille has been at pains trying to extricate herself from being viewed as the power behind the throne of the leader of the DA over the years.
With John Steenhuisen having announced he will not seek reelection to the position, Zille has been quoted as saying it is laughable for anyone to suggest she is behind the change.
But history suggests otherwise.
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Every candidate that she has supported for the position of federal leader of the DA has ascended to the throne and when she chooses to support someone else other than the incumbent, the DA has a new leader in the party election thereafter.
Deny it she will, but she is the most powerful leader in the DA.
What Zille and the DA cannot dispute, though, is that two factions have been created in the DA, one led by Zille and the other is behind Steenhuisen, the most senior DA leader in the GNU.
Like normally happens in the ANC once a new president of the party is elected, but is not the president of the country, two centres of power are created.
History has shown the DA’s nemesis is that the new president of the party becomes more powerful than the one leading the party in government.
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With the ANC, it has seen former presidents Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma not finish their terms of office in government.
The jury is still out on President Cyril Ramaphosa.
The GNU will still have a good three years to go when Zille’s chosen blue-eyed boy, current Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis is elected the new DA leader in April.
Will the DA survive the two centres of power when supposed friends are leaders of opposing factions in the DA?
Technically, when Hill-Lewis becomes leader of the DA, he will have the power to reshuffle the DA’s leadership in the GNU, but he would have to do that in consultation with Ramaphosa and the ANC, of course.
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Zille has probably thought this through, though, and thinks her faction will do the right thing when the time comes, whatever that right thing is.
The trick here, though, is that the DA has never been here before, having a leadership change while in national government.
Steenhuisen in 49 years old, hardly an age to go peacefully into retirement.
What will his next move mean for the DA? He has already made a cryptic post on X with a “Truman defeats Dewey picture” which could have been just a joke, or could mean everyone who thinks he is down and out is monumentally mistaken.
The DA has inherited all the problems of the ANC: factional battles, personality cult leadership battles and suggestions of top leadership who have no control over their finances and end up using party/state money for personal purposes.
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The country’s only wish is that whatever the DA ends up doing, it will put SA first.
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