Steenhuisen hints at Maimane’s exit hurting the DA at the polls: The DA leader apportioned some of the blame for the DA’s decline on his predecessor Mmusi Maimane “walking off the job”
Steenhuisen has also fallen short in terms of bringing back traditional white voters, which the dominant faction in the DA had believed him capable of doing.
In 2019, a panel review report on the party’s general elections performance — by former leaders Tony Leon and Ryan Coetzee, together with Capitec founder Michiel le Roux — tabled before the DA’s federal council, found that the party’s relentless focus of winning over black supporters was understandable, but that taking existing voters for granted was always a mistake.
In an interview with News24 in 2019, Steenhuisen said he would not be caught up in merely critiquing the government party’s policies all the time, a criticism levied against Maimane, but would come up with the DA’s own new, exciting, bold ideas. Defending the DA’s governance in Tshwane on Tuesday, Steenhuisen accused the ANC, which controls the overall Gauteng province, of having frustrated his party’s administration by placing the metro under administration.This was later overturned by the courts.