Former Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen has launched a blistering attack on his successor, Geordin Hill-Lewis, saying his removal as agriculture minister amounted to sacrificing him to hostile lobby groups and risking long-term political damage for the party.
In an exclusive interview with News24 editor-in-chief Adriaan Basson after his controversial removal by the DA last week, Steenhuisen alleged that Hill-Lewis broke a personal undertaking tied to the DA’s April leadership outcome. He also accused former DA leader Tony Leon’s public relations firm of using its access to DA leaders to lobby ministers in the government of national unity for clients, including Elon Musk’s Starlink.
Steenhuisen was removed from the Cabinet by Hill-Lewis last week and demoted to deputy minister of trade and industry. President Cyril Ramaphosa is yet to give effect to the DA’s Cabinet changes.
In the interview, Steenhuisen said he was “deeply disappointed” with Hill-Lewis, and framed the decision as more than a routine reshuffle.
“But I think my disappointment lies more at a personal level than at a professional level. Obviously, the leader of the party chooses who he appoints and disappoints, and I’ve always respected that… But I think in this instance, for me, the personal issue is that a word was given and a word was broken.”
Steenhuisen confirmed what DA sources had told News24: that he was promised he would remain agriculture minister if he did not contest the leadership in April.
“The deal was that I would stand down as leader, but that I would remain on as minister of agriculture, at least until I’ve been able to reach my target of vaccinating 80% of the cattle, given the fact that one of the reasons I stepped down was to focus full-time on the fight against FMD.
“I duly stood down, and now I’ve been removed from that particular fight with much progress having been made and obviously a long way still to go, but I really wanted to see that through… one of the reasons that I stood down was so that I could focus all of my attention on FMD and winning this war.”
At the heart of Steenhuisen’s argument is the claim that external pressure groups — which he labelled the “AfriMAGA mob” — have driven an organised campaign against him since he took the agriculture portfolio, and that the DA has now rewarded that pressure by removing him.
Steenhuisen says AfriForum, Sakeliga and the Southern African Agri Initiative (SAAI) “have been running a concerted campaign against me since I became the minister of agriculture”, even though they do not represent organised agriculture. He insisted he enjoyed the confidence of the majority of organised agriculture and pointed to support from Grain SA chairperson Richard Krige, who criticised the decision to remove him without consultation.
Krige wrote: “It is about ensuring that agricultural priorities are not dictated by unelected or self-appointed spokespeople who generate attention on social media without participating in the representative structures, technical processes and sustained work required to achieve results.”
Krige also questioned the political logic of acting on online momentum: “Did the political leadership respond primarily to the narrative gaining traction online and on social media? I do not know the answer. That is precisely the problem.”
Steenhuisen said he warned Hill-Lewis that sacking him would not calm the campaign against the DA, but embolden it. He described the move as “putting blood in the water”.
“I told him we must be very careful that we stick by our own people and that we back them in difficult circumstances and that if thinking that giving my head to the baying mob was going to appease them or somehow assuage their hunger for blood, it was only going to encourage it.
“I think I used the analogy about how hyenas hunt. They narrow somebody out of the herd, and they focus relentlessly on them, and they bring them down. But this now puts blood in the water.”
He said he feared the next targets could be Leon Schreiber on digital IDs in home affairs and Siviwe Gwarube on the Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Act. More broadly, he argued the party was misreading the political cost of appearing to bend to factional pressure.
Steenhuisen warned the DA that appeasing what he calls the AfriMAGA mob will send a signal to black, coloured and Indian voters that the party is not interested in them.
His own approach, he said, was to protect party colleagues under fire rather than abandon them.
“You circle the wagons, and you get behind them and give them the support they need to get through a difficult time, and I would really have appreciated a little bit more support than I got in terms of this fight.”
Steenhuisen’s sharpest personal criticism, however, was reserved for Tony Leon — his political mentor and the former DA leader — whom he accused of “relentlessly” driving negative publicity around foot-and-mouth disease (FMD). Steenhuisen said he was stunned to discover Leon’s firm, Resolve Communications, was the driving force behind FMD Response SA, a lobby group critical of the state’s handling of the outbreak.
“I was quite shocked when I found out that Resolve was doing this (PR for FMD Response), given the fact that Resolve themselves had regularly approached me as a minister to meet with their clients to try and assist their clients with issues and problems or policy changes that they would like to see,” said Steenhuisen.
“I had obviously interacted with Resolve on a number of occasions, and to then see them driving this narrative and complaint, particularly when the godfather of my daughter (Leon) chairs the company and Paul Boughey, the former CEO of the DA, is CEO of the company, was quite surprising to me.”
He said Leon never contacted him privately to discuss his handling of FMD. Resolve’s website, meanwhile, states the firm “specialises in setting the news agenda in top-tier print, radio, television, online and social media. We don’t just make the news, we make a difference.”
Boughey, Resolve’s CEO and a former DA chief executive, told News24 the firm had been approached “in an entirely unsolicited manner” by FMD Response SA in April and that its role was limited to helping farmers communicate their concerns.
“Our role was to help them communicate their legitimate concerns clearly and responsibly on a matter of genuine national importance. FMD Response engaged at all times on the matter in a non-personal and non-litigious manner, and always with a view to finding solutions for public and private sector cooperation to help combat this devastating disease.”
He rejected the suggestion that there was anything improper about Resolve previously seeking meetings with Steenhuisen on behalf of clients.
“The FMD response was a matter of public policy, properly addressed in the public domain and through official correspondence to Mr Steenhuisen. If Mr Steenhuisen is suggesting that a private approach from Tony Leon would have been appropriate, he cannot simultaneously argue that the firm facilitating meetings on behalf of clients is improper. Mr Steenhuisen cannot have it both ways.
“We would also hope he is not suggesting that his handling of the FMD crisis would have been any different had he received a private call from Tony, rather than the official approach he received from the affected farmers themselves,” said Boughey.
A separate controversy that preceded Steenhuisen’s demotion involved an email from his chief of staff, Jana le Roux, about a meeting request from FMD Response’s Andrew Morphew. In an email to colleagues, Le Roux wrote, “attached just received for some amusement”. A deputy director-general inadvertently sent the email to Morphew, who farms in Karkloof, KwaZulu-Natal. Le Roux’s explanation was that Morphew’s cattle were among the first farms to be vaccinated.
Morphew told News24 that Steenhuisen had visited his farm, taken photographs, held a press briefing and left, and that there had been no engagement before or after. “There was no engagement before, and there has been none since, including as a result of the letter FMD Response wrote to him asking to meet. I would not describe that as a relationship. I would describe it as the precise problem we are trying to solve: a government that is willing to be photographed with farmers, but not to engage with them on getting the FMD strategy right.”
He said the group approached Resolve to help communicate the science of the disease. “In particular, we have been at pains to explain, respectfully, to both government and the public why the current approach – vaccinating only 80% of cattle by December – will not beat the disease. Our message is simple: to beat FMD, you need to vaccinate close to 100% of cattle within six to eight weeks, with booster doses, to create simultaneous immunity and stop the spread.”
Morphew said he shared Le Roux’s email with his neighbour, the former journalist William Saunderson-Meyer, who then distributed it on social media. “The real issue here is not that the email was shared, but what it revealed.”
Steenhuisen also alleged that Resolve used its proximity to DA leaders to arrange access to ministers on behalf of corporate clients, raising questions, he said, about relationships and influence. He cited meetings he said were sought with DA ministers in the unity government, including communications and technology minister Solly Malatsi over Starlink.
“I know they’ve tried to get ministers to meet with various of their clients. Redisa is one of their clients, and they had reached out to former (environmental) minister Dion George and the current minister, Willie Aucamp, to try and get him to meet with them. Obviously, it’s difficult because often in these instances it would not be appropriate given the fact that Willie is currently involved in a court case.”
Steenhuisen said he met Resolve clients, including a chicken import company and Starlink, and described the Starlink meeting as politically uncomfortable.
“The meeting (with Starlink) was set up and ostensibly really just turned into a complaint session that Solly (Malatsi) wasn’t moving fast enough and the like. So I then raised within my caucus the unhappiness around what I thought was behaviour that would, if we didn’t check it, end up being problematic at some stage.”
Malatsi has advocated that Starlink be exempted from the 30% BEE equity ownership requirement for telecoms licences through participation in an equity-equivalent programme, an approach Icasa has refused, saying Malatsi would first have to amend the Electronic Communications Act. Malatsi told News24 he is routinely lobbied by stakeholders and said Resolve had queried the status of the equity-equivalent policy direction.
“I always make decisions without fear or favour, guided by the Constitution, the law and the mandate I have from the voters.”
Boughey defended Resolve’s work as legitimate public affairs.
“Connecting investors and businesses with the relevant parts of government is a core, legitimate part of public affairs, and it is squarely in the national interest. We engage government openly and on the merits. We advocate; we do not, and cannot, direct the decisions of independent ministers.”
Steenhuisen said he did not bar DA ministers from meeting Resolve clients, but insisted the potential for reputational harm was real, given what he described as “proximity” between company figures and DA leadership. He said he sometimes declined meeting requests.
“There was a push again for me to meet with one of the clients, and I got my office just to write back and say, ‘thank you very much, we’re aware of the problem, we’re addressing it, and we’re going to do what we can to resolve it, but it’s not necessary for us to meet’.
“I imagine this is the type of lobbying that goes on in government, and I have no doubt there’s nothing illegal about it, but there is a relationship issue given the proximity of some of the players in the company with their proximity to the DA, which did raise some concerns. And it goes back some time to when we were in opposition as well. There’s been a lot of push by clients in the tobacco lobby and others to meet with DA MPs and the like.”
Boughey responded that neither he nor Leon holds public office or controls public funds, and said the firm’s standards were clear.
“Our principals’ past affiliations are a matter of public record – there is nothing hidden. We help clients communicate the merits of their case so that it reaches the right public decision-makers, regardless of political affiliation, and the final decisions rest entirely with independent public representatives.”
He added Resolve holds itself to “high ethical standards”, and said a public exchange with Steenhuisen would not serve anyone.
For Steenhuisen, though, the fallout is not confined to one Cabinet post. He argues the DA’s response to pressure campaigns sets a precedent: back your own, or watch opponents pick off individuals one by one — while voters, particularly those the party is still trying to win, draw their own conclusions about who the DA will fight for when the pressure comes.
