Fundamental change. A new era. A fresh start. There has not been this much media swooning over a politician’s ascent since President Cyril Ramaphosa’s “new dawn”.
The DA, after decades of hostile – and often shamelessly dishonest – press coverage, should be forgiven for basking in the glow. It will not last long. Media infatuations are brief. But there’s the intangible power of hope.
The DA has genuinely changed guard. Geordin Hill-Lewis has replaced John Steenhuisen, and the party’s senior ranks are now occupied by what Peter Bruce in the Sunday Times called “one of the youngest and most racially diverse leadership teams in our modern politics”.
It comes at a critical moment, just as the country’s mood of disillusionment has yielded to a tentative optimism built around the government of national unity (GNU). So far, however, the GNU has been a deeply flawed and disappointing vehicle for reform.
ANC ideologues still dominate its direction. This reflects the DA’s weak position within the GNU, which has prevented it from exerting anything like the leverage it ought to wield. For that to change, the DA has to do one of two things. It must either renegotiate the terms of its participation or learn to wield power properly. That can only be done through force of personality and the arts of politics: bargaining, dealmaking and brinkmanship – the test Hill-Lewis will now have to meet.
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Hill-Lewis has been dealt a difficult hand because this is, ultimately, a civilisational contest. The issue is not whether he can champion the liberal reforms essential to growth and investment. It is whether SA remains a society shaped historically by a Judaeo-Christian ethical culture and a Western liberal constitutional inheritance, or continues its drift into warmer alignment with Iran, China, and Russia.
And he must do so while persuading that vast reservoir of ANC-disillusioned non-voters – people who have deserted the governing party but remain deeply suspicious of the whole tradition of “white” liberalism – to cross the psychological threshold and vote DA.
Hill-Lewis’ acceptance speech dealt more in inspiration than in substance, but that is the nature of all such orations. The nitty-gritty comes later. Or never.
He speaks of building a DA that listens to “ordinary people” to “earn their trust”, while Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube, one of a trio of new deputy chairs, says the party must cease being “just a party of competence” and become a “party of compassion”.
Under Hill-Lewis, the DA’s first national goal will be the restoration of law and order. It is a shrewd political choice. Crime cuts across race and class and is easy to connect to most of the country’s other great anxieties. But there is a practical difficulty.
Since the ANC has kept the DA out of the security cluster, it is not clear how Hill-Lewis will make law and order an area in which the DA can do more than cheer or jeer.
He also faces immediate challenges. He intends to lead at a distance, without serving in Ramaphosa’s Cabinet, or even sitting in parliament. Indeed, he wears the mantle of DA leadership so lightly that he plans not only to remain mayor of Cape Town but to seek re-election. That is a grave mistake.
He will be absent from the engine room of national constitutional politics – an engine room still dominated by his predecessor and crewed almost entirely by Steenhuisen loyalists. When it comes to removing underperforming DA ministers – and Steenhuisen is currently one of them – he may find that the necessary changes carry explosive intraparty consequences.
The decision to stay in Cape Town creates not just a political problem, but a structural one. The DA will now have a party leader and a separate parliamentary leader, a classic recipe for mistrust and mixed messaging. It also sharply limits Hill-Lewis’ national visibility.
For all the euphoria, a great deal of voter persuasion still has to happen. That, of course, is exactly the task Hill-Lewis has signed up for, albeit as a side hustle.
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