DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis’s biggest nightmare

Political analyst Frans Cronje said the DA’s biggest threat is no longer the ANC. Instead, it is people losing faith in the government and living in self-sufficient enclaves.

Cronje shared his thoughts about the Democratic Alliance’s (DA’s) political future and the direction South Africa is moving in during a The Common Sense podcast.

“The DA’s competitor today is not the ANC. The ANC is helpless. The DA’s competitor is something else: it’s enclaves,” he said.

“It’s this phenomenon, which is advanced in South Africa, where people give up on the state and go and do things for themselves.”

He said that people do it so successfully that it has reached a point where it has created a sustainable, stable future for the middle classes despite government failures.

This, Cronje argued, creates a risk to the DA as people do not rely on a well-run government for their future.

“The danger for the DA is that if it cannot demonstrate that it can perform successfully in the central government, it will go the same route as the ANC,” he said.

“The risk to the DA is that if it’s not seen as serious in government, it will fade into relative irrelevance together with the ANC.”

He argued that for the Democratic Alliance to remain relevant, it must perform exceptionally well in government.

“The DA actually has to be excellent, because otherwise South Africans won’t believe the union can hold together anymore,” Cronje said.

“When this happens, people will retreat into their enclaves and will have a successful future there in a relative sense.

The result will be that the ANC and the DA will end up in a box labelled ‘irrelevant politicians of the past.’

“They can fight elections out there, and people in South Africa will care progressively less,” he said.

The ANC’s strategy is to drag the DA down to its level

Cronje argued that the ANC’s current political strategy is to intentionally drag the DA down to its level, as it cannot recover.

“The ANC would privately concede that it cannot recover, so the only way it can remain politically competitive is to pull the DA down to its level,” he said.

“That way, come the election in 2029, South African voters will think, ‘You know, the ANC is useless, but the DA is useless too’,” he said.

Through this strategy, the ANC can secure a degree of parity advantage over the DA, which will help during elections.

This is why it was so important that the new DA leader, Geordin Hill-Lewis, removed John Steenhuisen as the Minister of Agriculture.

However, giving underperforming politicians like Steenhuisen a soft landing rather than firing them is dangerous as it emulates the ANC’s behaviour.

“John Steenhuisen has been removed, and that’s a good thing. However, he’s been demoted more than removed,” he said.

“It sits uncomfortably that he hasn’t been dismissed completely, because it feels a little bit like the ANC and the way it treated its cadres.”

“When ANC cadres mess up in government, they get a soft landing rather than an outright dismissal. The danger of this in the DA is very great.”

He said the DA’s behaviour mirrors the ANC’s toxic history of cadre deployment and lack of accountability, which threatens the DA’s reputation for professionalism.