Geordin Hill-Lewis’s reshuffle of the DA’s GNU team is the clearest sign yet that he understands an uncomfortable truth about party leadership: government appointments are valuable instruments of political party management.
The biggest move, of course, is John Steenhuisen’s shift from head of the agriculture portfolio to Deputy Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition.
Steenhuisen entered the agriculture portfolio in July 2024 with three core tasks: to improve global trade in South African agricultural products, to earn and retain the trust of the agricultural sector, and to handle foot-and-mouth disease with greater skill than any of his predecessors. On the trade front, he performed reasonably well. On trust and foot-and-mouth disease, his term left far too much to be desired, to the point that his position became politically untenable. Steenhuisen became more of a political liability than an asset.
A sideways move to a portfolio such as forestry, fisheries and the environment would have cost Hill-Lewis credibility at a sensitive point in his first substantive exercise of power as leader. It would have cheapened his reshuffle. Had Steenhuisen simply swapped posts with someone like Willie Aucamp, the voter would have seen only the pathetic and damaging ANC habit of redeployment after failure, this time dressed in DA clothing.
At the same time, removing Steenhuisen entirely would have meant ignoring both his genuine ministerial successes on trade agreements, and the personal loyalty Hill-Lewis clearly still feels towards his predecessor.
The careful middle course of a demotion to deputy minister in a portfolio focused precisely on trade is therefore revealing of Hill-Lewis’s decision-making. Steenhuisen is clearly found wanting, but he is not thrown onto the scrapheap. His failure to manage the full scope of the agriculture portfolio successfully is recognised, but so are his trade successes.
In the nuance of the move, Hill-Lewis shows that he is in control, willing to hold the man he succeeded as party leader accountable, while avoiding the unnecessary humiliation of someone who played a central role in the DA’s recovery after 2019.
Willie Aucamp’s sideways move from forestry, fisheries and the environment to take over the agriculture portfolio also makes sense. He is a farmer himself, which gives him an immediate advantage in a portfolio where credibility and a bond of trust with the sector are far more than decorative extras.
Well-known failures
Thanks to both the successes and the well-known failures of his predecessor, he also inherits a clearer route forward on foot-and-mouth disease than Steenhuisen had at the beginning of the GNU. The vaccination campaign to secure the national herd appears to be moving in the right direction, although it has been overshadowed by political mistakes, poor staffing choices, and an office that too often appeared incompetent, stubborn and flat-footed. That says nothing of the questionable ideological decision by a DA minister to prefer state capacity above the capacity of the private sector. Such a decision may well have been necessary. Unfortunately, Steenhuisen simply failed to make the case for it, politically or legally.
Aucamp can therefore build on what Steenhuisen got right, while avoiding the areas in which Steenhuisen failed.
Politically, his appointment may be even more useful for Hill-Lewis’s DA. Steenhuisen’s handling of foot-and-mouth disease damaged the DA’s standing among parts of the Afrikaner electorate, especially in the north of the country. For many of these voters, “the farm” is not an abstract economic unit. It is often bound up with family, memory, identity, inheritance and a kind of identity vulnerability.
Even suburban Afrikaner voters with no direct exposure to livestock diseases and their consequences grew increasingly frustrated with what they saw as the poor handling of the crisis. DA councillors in places such as Pretoria frequently reported that the issue was being raised unfavourably in voter interactions.
Steenhuisen’s removal, and Aucamp’s appointment to a post that carries considerable emotional weight for many Afrikaner voters, will be welcomed in parts of the party that have come under increasing pressure from voters who felt culturally and politically alienated from the outgoing minister. Aucamp’s Afrikaner pedigree should not be underestimated in this respect. As the son of Cassie Aucamp, the Dopper theologian and former MP for the Afrikaner Eenheidsbeweging, he is one of the DA’s most prominent Afrikaner figures, alongside Cilliers Brink and Ian Cameron.
Hill-Lewis’s thinking
This very likely featured in Hill-Lewis’s thinking. The DA cannot grow in the way Hill-Lewis wants, becoming the largest party in the country by 2029, while taking for granted the voters who became part of the DA’s broader electoral coalition between the 1992 “yes” referendum and the 1999 “fight back” election.
This voter category is a sensitive one for the DA precisely because, in 2019, it was alienated from the party on a notable scale when Mmusi Maimane’s DA unwisely played racial identity politics in the run-up to the election. Aucamp gives Hill-Lewis’s DA, precisely because he is probably well suited to the role in terms of experience, a chance to restore some of those bonds without appearing blatantly identity-driven.
The reshuffle also shows that Hill-Lewis understands something Steenhuisen largely neglected. Cabinet appointments do far more than settle administrative questions. They form a deep part of a party’s internal cohesion in terms of morale, ambition, loyalty, factional balance, regional buy-in and the willingness of senior figures to defend a leader when he comes under pressure. Appointments to government office by the leader’s choice are a central part of party management in government.
Steenhuisen’s original GNU appointments were widely viewed inside the party as narrow and factional. In the end, that cost him dearly. When his own position became vulnerable, when he needed supporters willing to defend him in what ultimately became a one-sided public debate over his handling of the foot-and-mouth disease crisis, he lacked the necessary public defenders because his most prominent loyalists were themselves busy managing ministerial departments. His champions were too few, too busy, or too politically exposed to protect him. Had Steenhuisen been more careful in his choice of initial ministerial colleagues, he might have secured broader party ownership of the DA’s political mission in the GNU, along with surrogates able to fight his case in public.
Hill-Lewis looks determined not to repeat that mistake. The overall shape of his reshuffled GNU team produces no obvious winning faction, especially when it comes to new additions to the DA’s presence in national government.
Regional spread
In terms of regional spread, the basis on which political parties must be able to cohere, David Maynier, the proposed new Minister of Environmental Affairs who succeeds Aucamp, comes from the Western Cape; Jack Bloom, the new choice as Deputy Minister of Water and Sanitation, comes from Gauteng; and Yusuf Cassim, proposed for the role of Deputy Minister of Higher Education and Training, comes from the Eastern Cape.
This is no accident. Apart from the fact that all three politicians have shown skill in their own right, these are precisely provinces where the DA needs to consolidate and expand support with an eye on the local government elections in November and the longer road to 2029. Buy-in to Hill-Lewis’s agenda for the party from these federal party structures will be assisted by his decision to include prominent and respected representatives from their ranks.
Ideologically, the balance of the new DA appointments is also deft. Aucamp comes from the small-c conservative part of the DA. Maynier is closer to the party’s more technocratic and social-democratic wing. Bloom represents the DA’s old Prog tradition of classical liberalism.
Geographically and in terms of political conviction, Hill-Lewis has not handed his reshuffle to a single ideological camp. This is important because Hill-Lewis’s own leadership position contained an unusual risk from the start. His overwhelming mandate from DA delegates in April gave him considerable authority, but he entered the leadership without an obvious personal faction in the party at national level. His strength in this regard is that, as leader, he belongs to the whole party.
The weakness flowing from this is that, when pressure comes, he may discover that belonging to everyone can mean that no one claims you as their own, and that no one then defends you when you become politically vulnerable.
Hill-Lewis’s moves suggest that he understands this danger. Apart from the exceptional case of Steenhuisen, the appointments do not send the message that personal proximity to Hill-Lewis is the path to promotion. Bloom’s appointment is an especially good example. There is no obvious personal bond between Hill-Lewis and Bloom. They come from different generations, different regions and different political experiences. The message to the party is therefore useful: recognition for performance will not be limited to some inner circle around the party leader.
Builds authority
This is how a non-factional leader builds authority. He cannot rely only on old loyalists, because he has few of them. Nor can he govern through a clique, a sofa cabinet, because that would immediately endanger his mandate. He has to create a broader sense of buy-in, so that the party’s internal ladder of advancement remains accessible to those who perform and add value.
This reshuffle is therefore more than a personnel shift. It is Hill-Lewis’s first serious act of national party management. It lifts a prominent predecessor out of his office without destroying him. It places a more credible figure, in terms of both governing ability and political affiliation, in a sensitive role at a sensitive moment. It spreads recognition across regions, traditions and ideological tendencies in the party. It also implicitly warns the party that performance, rather than seniority or proximity to the leader, will carry greater weight in Hill-Lewis’s DA.
None of this will guarantee success. Aucamp still has to show that he can succeed where Steenhuisen failed. Steenhuisen must prove that he can make use of a smaller role and not allow an undoubtedly difficult change to damage his personal and political ability to perform. Maynier, Bloom, Cassim and others still have to justify Hill-Lewis’s trust. The reshuffle will ultimately be judged by whether it improves government performance and strengthens the DA’s political position. Or not.
But as an opening move of national party leadership at the highest level of national politics, it is sharper than many expected. Hill-Lewis shows that he is willing to make uncomfortable but definite decisions, that he sees the party as a national talent pool, and that he understands that party management cannot be left to others.
[Image: By Staff photographer in the employ of the Democratic Alliance – Democratic Alliance, CC BY-SA 3.0 za, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=112523100]
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