Foot-in-mouth: behind the putsch on Steenhuisen

If John Steenhuisen leaves Agriculture Place on Arcadia’s Steve Biko Street in the next week or two, he’ll do so with a veritable grab-bag of ministerial swag. 

There’s an assortment of taxidermied animals; a mohair jersey, tartan tie, windbreaker and other sartorial merch; there’s wine and a swanky Fieldbar cooler; honey, biltong, ostrich meats. And a beekeeper suit.

It will be small consolation for losing his job as agriculture minister.

This week, DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis announced that he’s asked President Cyril Ramaphosa to reshuffle a whack of DA positions in cabinet. Topping that list is Steenhuisen’s downgrade to a deputy minister position.

It’s quite the switcheroo. Hill-Lewis wants Steenhuisen replaced by environment minister Willie Aucamp, who in turn will be replaced by Western Cape education MEC David Maynier. Steenhuisen will replace Alexandra Abrahams as deputy minister of trade, industry and competition; she will replace Samantha Graham as deputy of the electricity portfolio.

Higher education portfolio committee member Yusuf Carrim will be elevated to deputy minister of higher education and training, and Gauteng MPL Jack Bloom will take on the deputy minister of water and sanitation role.

The shuffle comes, so Hill-Lewis says, after a “careful assessment” of the DA’s team in cabinet and the decision that the new team will “give better effect to the mandate received from 3.5-million voters”. In other words, the party high command must reckon the benched ministers have performed with all the panache of tepid tea.

In Steenhuisen’s case this is likely attributed to his handling of the devastating foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) outbreak and the resultant alienation of at least a portion of a key DA constituency: organised agriculture.

It’s telling that Aucamp’s first order of business is to “restore confidence” in the ministry bringing the crisis under control.

Agri-organisations have accused government of sitting on its hands as FMD has run riot, and of centralising vaccine procurement and distribution, to the detriment of farmers. The latter issue has seen a number of agricultural bodies take the department to court.

Putting out fires

One agricultural expert I spoke to reckons it’s not an entirely fair assessment; he says Steenhuisen “catches a lot more fire than he deserves”. 

On balance, he says, Steenhuisen has done a decent job, though he had tailwinds assisting him. He came into his position at a time of abundance and good harvests, for one. Also, to attribute the expansion of international markets for agricultural produce entirely to him – as Hill-Lewis politely did – may be a stretch, given that these years-long agreements go back to former trade, industry and competition minister Ebrahim Patel and former agriculture minister Thoko Didiza’s time.

But to castigate Steenhuisen over FMD is unfair, the expert argues. 

Since this outbreak could have resulted from illegally imported private vaccines that introduced a new strain of virus, it was correct, at the least, to centralise procurement. Giving the private sector carte blanche on vaccines could have made this a whole lot worse.

But in not staffing his office correctly – his advisers included no academics, for example – Steenhuisen was short of the “big ideas” that should define a minister’s tenure. Instead, he was seen as a “firefighter”, on the backfoot dealing with crises.

‘For your amusement’

There’s also that small matter of his chief of staff. 

Lawyer Roman Cabanac clung to the position like a limpet at a superglue convention, but he was ultimately let go. His replacement, Jana le Roux, was about as smooth as a bag of spanners. And classy: at a Nampo social event back in May, she apparently told Free State Agriculture (FSA) CEO Gerrie Botha “I will fuck you up in court,” according to Rapport.

That aged badly; just days later, the high court found in favour of FSA and others on the issue of private purchasing and administration of FMD vaccines.

Then she opened her mouth a little wider to fit the other foot in, forwarding perfectly reasonable-sounding correspondence from FMD Response SA to department officials for their “amusement”, she said. 

This wasn’t some internet meme designed for a bit of a workplace har-har. It was an email raising concerns about whether the government’s plan to vaccinate 80% of cattle by December would actually achieve herd immunity given the risk of reinfection. Quite a biggie, you’d think. That Le Roux thought she’d find a receptive audience says everything about how seriously she – and the department – takes its stakeholders.

It’s such staffing oversights, says the expert, that have dragged Steenhuisen into a mire of gossip, where he should have been focusing on farmers.

Steenhuisen, of course, is not just any minister. He’s the former leader of the DA who stepped out of the party’s leadership race to focus exclusively on his portfolio – and FMD in particular. 

He clearly wasn’t expecting his term of office to end so abruptly. So you can imagine he’s a little acid about it all.

Not that this is all a done deal. It’s ultimately the prerogative of Ramaphosa to make changes to his cabinet, and he’s likely also a bit acid about how things have played out.

Perhaps Hill-Lewis should have approached Ramaphosa privately about the changes, and then issued a statement once the president had announced them. To put the cart before the horse, as he did, puts Ramaphosa on the spot – and invites pushback from ANC leaders. This means things could still end badly for Hill-Lewis.

Ramaphosa could opt to keep Steenhuisen right where he is, but that won’t ease the sting of the loss of standing in the party that Hill-Lewis’s announcement implies. At least he still has that beekeeper’s suit.

ALSO READ:

• The DA just got much younger. The ANC should worry
• Real Politics: Hill-Lewis might just be the reset the DA needs
• Dear John … what comes next for the DA?

_{Top image collage: AP; Rawpixel; Currency.}