Re-elected Steenhuisen to seek ‘moon shot pact’ to keep EFF out of power
‘I commit the DA to fight back against the EFF at every turn, with the ultimate aim of defeating the doomsday coalition that could seal SA’s fate next year. This is no longer about politics. It is about the survival of democracy, and the survival of SA’
An emboldened, re-elected DA leader John Steenhuisen has declared the EFF his party’s enemy number 1.
Steenhuisen, who walloped Mpho Phalatse to clinch a second term as party leader, said the DA must do all it could to stop the possibility of the EFF knocking on the doors of the Union Buildings after next year’s election through a coalition with the ANC.
Steenhuisen scooped 1,361 votes from the 1,658 voting delegates (85% support) to Phalatse’s 287 votes.
Party veteran Helen Zille was also re-elected unopposed as DA federal council chair, a position that keeps her in charge of the party’s administrative machinery and day-today affairs.
Steenhuisen told the almost 2,000 delegates at the party’s federal congress in Midrand that the DA could not stand by and watch a possible “doomsday coalition” between the ANC and the EFF.
An alliance between the ANC and the EFF would be catastrophic for the country, he said, and it was up to the DA to topple any such marriage.
In fact, Steenhuisen said, the country’s survival depended on it. “Today, I publicly declare Julius Malema’s EFF to be political enemy number one of the DA,” he said to loud applause.
“And I commit the DA to fight back against the EFF at every turn, with the ultimate aim of defeating the doomsday coalition that could seal SA’s fate next year. This is no longer about politics. It is about the survival of democracy, and the survival of SA.”
Steenhuisen said he would soon propose what he calls a “moon shot pact” with likeminded political parties and organisations that needed to be in place before the national elections. “In my capacity as leader, not only of the DA but of the opposition alternative in this country, our party will immediately initiate a process to form a pre-election ‘moon shot pact’ with like-minded political parties, civil society organisations and civic movements to defeat the ANC, to keep the EFF out, and to inaugurate a new national opposition coalition government,” he said.
“This invitation is broad and generously open to the leaders of all civil society bodies and opposition parties that are, as a matter of principle, opposed to the ANC and the EFF.
“But it excludes all parties and organisations who’ve tethered themselves to the ANC.