MMUSI, HELEN AND ME
My hands are clean, says John Steenhuisen
I think people give [Helen Zille] a bad rap. I think she has done more for freedom and democracy than some people sitting on the ANC benches
During the good times in the DA, John Steenhuisen, former party leader Mmusi Maimane and former Eastern Cape leader Athol Trollip were the party’s A-team. They were close both within and outside the political boardroom.
After all, when Steenhuisen decided to enter holy matrimony, Maimane, as an ordained pastor, was there to administer the wedding vows while Trollip stood on the other side handing over the wedding bands as Steenhuisen’s best man.
But fast-forward to 2019, and the Best Friends Forever no longer see eye to eye politically. Never did it occur to Steenhuisen that one day he would replace the man who had presided over one of his most personal moments.
“We were personal friends. He is the guy who married me and my wife,” reveals Steenhuisen, trying to emphasise the close relationship he had with Maimane. “He was the pastor at my wedding and my best man was Athol Trollip.”
He’s quick to add: “We had a very strong personal relationship. That’s not to say we agreed on everything. It was my job to advise Mmusi when I felt he wasn’t doing something that was right.
“I won’t lie and say it wasn’t strained towards the end. I think that he was under a lot of pressure.
Media scrutiny
“I think by that stage the media scrutiny and the stuff about the car [Maimane was accused of driving around in a car that was a gift from former Steinhoff boss Markus Jooste] had really started to weigh very heavily on him and I think he had started to not trust people around him and things just happened very quickly in those last few weeks. I don’t think there was time to sit and process stuff,” he says about their relationship.
He reveals that the last time the two of them sat down together was in the parliamentary leader’s office — then occupied by Maimane and now an office Steenhuisen occupies — discussing what needed to be done before a federal council meeting that would change the face of the DA. This was a few days before the federal council met to consider the review report which saw Maimane’s departure.
“It’s been very tough on a personal level but this is a cause that’s bigger than individuals, I am not just going to walk away from the project,” he says.
The wedding that Maimane presided over was Steenhuisen’s second marriage, his first having ended after a much-publicised affair with Terry Beaumont, the woman he later married.
“I met my current wife and I fell in love and I happened to be married at the time, unfortunately. The rest has been written about. I ended up getting divorced,” he says.
Steenhuisen describes this period as the “toughest
We were personal friends. He [Mmusi Maimane] is the guy who married me and my wife … We had a very strong personal relationship. That’s not to say we agreed on everything. It was my job to advise Mmusi when I felt he wasn’t doing something that was right
time” in both his political career and personally.
It was also a big learning curve. Steenhuisen, 34 at the time, stood down as the DA’s KwaZulu-Natal provincial leader and its leader in the provincial legislature in October 2010 when news of his marital infidelity broke. He remained a backbencher in the provincial legislature.
He says that though giving up the positions was “the hardest thing to do”, it had to be done in his own and the party’s best interests.
“I went back to the back benches and built myself again. I started from the ground up.”
Stepping down was not only about taking responsibility. Steenhuisen says it was also about allowing the healing and rehabilitation processes to start. “I think I was proved right in the long run.”
He claims that many in the DA had written him off during this period, saying his political career was over.
“There I was, a rising star of the DA, 34 years old, leading the party — the future — and suddenly overnight, people stop taking your calls and some of the people who sold you out in the media were people within your own party. It was a big learning experience for me about being resilient.”
Steenhuisen became a member of parliament a few months later, “strategically” swapping with an MP who wanted to go back to KwaZulu-Natal. This gave him an opportunity of a fresh start in a new city and away from the people who had been part of his downfall. While some of his friends turned out not to be true friends, one of the people who did not leave Steenhuisen’s side during his dark hour was then party leader Helen Zille.
Supportive
“She was very supportive. She used to phone me regularly to check up how things were going, how I was, and would give me encouragement. She kept on saying careers aren’t linear, they move in waves, you are up and down and you must learn how to ride out the lows and you’d appreciate the highs more.”
He is not shy to talk about his “deep admiration” for the newly elected federal council chair.
“There is personal history there. I am deeply admiring of her.”
In the many interviews Steenhuisen had following his election as interim leader, journalists have been asking how he would manage a relationship with Zille, who is known as some sort of iron lady.
“I think people give her a bad rap. I think she has done more for freedom and democracy than some people sitting on the ANC benches. She is the most successful premier in post-democratic South Africa. She hasn’t only spoken about lifting people out of
Suddenly overnight people stop taking your calls and some of the people who sold you out in the media were people within your own party
poverty and creating jobs and a capable state, she delivered. She doesn’t get enough credit for that.
“And what political party wouldn’t want those skills that she built up over 10 years in government in the party, particularly if we are going to use our governance to show the DA difference?” he says about Zille’s return to active politics.
He clarifies that, contrary to what has been reported, unlike Zille, he is not a “classical liberal”. The recent upheaval in the party has been blamed on tensions between the so-called social liberals and classical liberals clashing over the direction the party was taking under Maimane.
“I wouldn’t say I am a classical liberal. I don’t believe that a state is not an actor; I think there is a role for the state in society. I am not hard-arse pull yourself up by your bootstraps; do it on your own and no one else can help you.”
Maimane resigned as DA leader in October, claiming that the party was no longer the vehicle best suited to take forward the vision of building one SA for all. He claimed the existence of a grouping within the DA that did not see eye to eye with him, nor share his vision for the party and the direction it was taking.
“There has been for several months a consistent and co-ordinated attempt to undermine my leadership and ensure that either this project failed or
I failed,” Maimane said at the time.
This was three days after the party elected Zille as its new federal council chair and discussed a review panel report commissioned by Maimane which found there was an overwhelming view in the DA that he, though immensely talented, committed to the cause, hard-working and widely liked, could also be indecisive, inconsistent and conflict-averse.
The report further said that, among other things, this had led to a lack of clarity on the party’s vision and direction, an erosion of unity of purpose and the breakdown of trust between the leader and some of the party’s structures. While it called for Maimane to consider stepping down, the federal council instead opted for an early conference and a policy conference.
Steenhuisen denies claims that he stabbed Maimane in the back. “It’s simply not true.”
Steenhuisen says he voted for Zille as federal council chair because when it came to the 18 key requirements of the job, she was head and shoulders the best person for that job.
Though Steenhuisen has cleaned up his personal image — he has stopped drinking and is looking fitter and trimmer and expects the DA to do the same — there are certain issues from the recent past that both the party and its interim leader will have to deal with before moving with speed on his new political mission.
Tough lessons
The DA has gone through a tough few months, having lost seats in this year’s general election and with Maimane ditching the party.
“We lost votes in all communities and it was the worst of all worlds and I think it had to do with the DA’s messaging. The voters got an impression that we had picked one race group over another when that is not the case,” says Steenhuisen.
“I think the DA was far too desperate to try and look like we were a better version of the ANC rather than setting up our own stall. We ended up trading communities off against each other and we weren’t consistent on the issues of black and white racism — speaking out against some and not against what others did or said — and that’s when you become the wobbly jelly.”
Interestingly, in his resignation speech Maimane used exactly the same words — picking one race or gender over another — when he explained that the “diversity clause” he had sponsored at the party’s last federal congress in 2018 wasn’t about picking one race over another.
According to Steenhuisen, the DA took short cuts and wouldn’t do the hard yards; short cuts that came back to bite the party at the May 8 elections.
Among those was the parachuting in of Maimane to lead the party first in parliament in May 2014 and as its federal leader a year later.
Steenhuisen says this is a lesson the party had to learn — that progress is measured in hard yards and not in short cuts and that when you take short cuts, sometimes it ends up costing you down the line.
“The hard yards are getting out to communities and building the party from the ground up,” he says.