John Steenhuisen steps back from DA leadership race amid Foot-and-Mouth Disease crisis

The DA Federal Leader, John Steenhuisen, has officially pulled out of the party’s race to lead the party for the third term, saying he has accomplished what he wanted.

In a media briefing in Durban on Wednesday, the Agriculture Minister said apart from that, he felt he had accomplished his mission. Another reason he decided not to seek re-election was that he wanted to focus all his energies on fighting devastating Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) in the country.

His department has been struggling to contain the spread of the disease, and farmers are breathing down his neck. 

“In April 2023, following my re-election as Federal Leader with a decisive mandate of 83% from Federal Congress delegates, I announced that the DA was ready to take this moonshot. That we were going to shed our image as a party that only shouted at others from the comfort of the sidelines, and mature into a party that gets stuck in to fix the country we all love.

“At the time, I also warned that if the DA was unable to mature and rise to the demands of a coalition country, it would be responsible for selling South Africa out to the populist Doomsday Coalition. A little over a year later, on the 3rd of July 2024, the DA achieved our moonshot,” boasted Steenhuisen.

He thanked all the DA supporters and said he would embark on a new mission, which is to defeat the FMD and ensure it does not occur again, saying he would not be able to fight the disease while running around in the country campaigning for the party to win the local government election.

“For the rest of this term of office, I will focus all my time and energy as Minister of Agriculture on defeating the most devastating Foot-and-Mouth Disease outbreak our country has ever seen, and to pursue mass vaccination to ensure that this is the last mass outbreak of FMD our country ever sees. After leading the DA into the GNU, my next chapter must be to eradicate this devastating disease from our shores once and for all. That is not a part-time job.

“It would not be fair to the incredible farmers of South Africa for me to split my time between battling the worst FMD outbreak ever on the one hand, while also running an internal campaign for the next three months, and then leading a local government election campaign, on the other hand.” 

willem.phungula@inl.co.za