‘We were as good as dead, I resurrected the party,’ says Steenhuisen

Party leader John Steenhuisen said he inherited a DA that many had written off and worked hard at its revival and resurrection.

Steenhuisen was addressing delegates on the final day of the party’s electoral congress, ahead of his re-election. He delivered his federal leader’s report detailing the state of the party.

“Everywhere, people were writing the DA off. They were speculating about who would replace us as official opposition — and how soon — and what the country’s coalition prospects would look like once we’d faded away,

“According to Ipsos at the time, the DA was polling at just 16%. No-one saw us coming back from that,” said the party leader.

He says upon taking up office as interim federal leader in October 2019, the party had just emerged from their first ever election where it had lost ground.

“It was a party in electoral decline. A party that struggled to define its values. A party with no clear ideological position on just about any issue,” said the incumbent.

He added that the party was faced with a choice to either listen to the advice of the external critics, or it could try to rediscover the party it once was.

Speaking on the state of the party, Steenhuisen boldly pronounced the DA was entering the 2024 elections in a strong position not by default or accident, but as a result of bold moves that were taken at a time where things looked much worse for the organisation.

“We worked very hard to put ourselves in this position. We kept a brave face, but even internally there were some who had doubts about the future of the party.

"But this was nothing compared to externally. For non-DA voters and an increasingly DA-critical press, we were as good as dead,” said the party leader.

Steenhuisen added the internal reason behind their electoral troubles were a result of having become untethered from their party values and liberal principles.

“By the end of 2019, after the release of our review panel report and the exit of several high-profile leaders, many wasted no time in penning our obituary.

“We knew that, in trying to dabble in identity politics and watered-down aspects of policies of parties like the ANC in an effort to be a bit of everything to everyone, we had given up our very strong, very clear identity. And in politics, that’s suicide,” he said

He said externally the party’s problems “had been diagnosed very differently by some commentators. To these critical media voices, it was precisely because we hadn’t gone far enough in appropriating the ANC’s stance on race and the ANC’s polices on redress that we were doomed.

“'If only the DA could be a better ANC, it would win elections comfortably,' was the central message of their analysis.”

Steenhuisen said the future now looks bright for the DA.

“The shifts we are seeing today — the undeniable implosion of the ANC, the growth in DA support in all credible polls and the rise of alternative governments — all point to one thing: A changing of the guard,” he said.

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