The Bureau of Cynicism delves into the tumultuous political journey of John Steenhuisen, a man who has turned scandals into a masterclass in political survival. Is he truly the bumbling fool he appears to be, or is he the accidental assassin of the Democratic Alliance?
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John Steenhuisen. The man who has spent the last fifteen years playing high-stakes Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun, only to somehow shoot the guy standing next to him every single time and walk away without a scratch.
If you made a list of his scandals, any normal politician would have been exiled to a remote farm in the Karoo years ago.
He started early. Back in 2010 when as a rising star of KZN politics he blew up his own leadership by having a spectacular, highly publicised extramarital affair with Michael Beaumont’s then-wife, who he then married. And that wife-swap drama would be enough political scandal for many political lifetimes. Not our John.
In 2021, his brilliant national strategy was to hang massive blue election posters in a racial flashpoint suburb reading: "The ANC called you racists. The DA called you heroes." - then going on TV to defend the damn things with his chest while his PR team suffered a collective stroke.
Next, he got caught using the party credit card for personal domestic expenses, triggering a massive, 84-page affidavit from his own finance head accusing him of pure, vindictive retaliation, which only ended when Helen Zille announced John had to pay back the chicken wing money.
As Agriculture Minister, he skipped the soil scientists to put a far-right, conspiracy-theorist podcaster in charge of food security, stubbornly defending him before smuggling him out the back door with a massive payout.
Then came the cattle crisis, where John hoarded Foot-and-Mouth vaccines like Gollum until desperate farmers dragged him to court, while his Chief of Staff leaked an email mocking their urgent pleas for "some amusement".
The conclusion is obvious: the man is a walking, talking disaster zone. He is Michael Scott if Dunder Mifflin was a political party. Johnny English in a blue tie. A bumbling, middle-management bureaucrat who trips over his own shoelaces and accidentally knocks over the national cabinet.
But what if we’ve got it all wrong? What if the matric-only, chicken-wing-eating, wife-swapping cartoon character isn’t a tragedy? What if it’s the most brilliant, sophisticated political disguise South Africa has ever seen?
What if John Steenhuisen isn’t Johnny English?
What if he is actually John Wickhuisen?
Think about it. For a decade, the Democratic Alliance’s clever, highly educated elite have treated John like a useful, loud-mouthed placeholder. A guy who, for all his f*ck ups and liabilities, they could say to each other: “Well at least he’s not Mmusi.” They thought they could run him from the shadows, feed him some talking points, and replace him whenever a shiny new golden boy came along. And for a long time, John played the part perfectly. He stood in parliament, shouted about accountability, and made funny noises at the ANC. He looked completely harmless.
Then, the moment they tried to take him out, John Wickhuisen loaded his weapons.
His execution of his own political exit was a masterclass in scorched-earth warfare. When his successor, Geordin Hill-Lewis, and the DA patriarchs finally managed to push him out, they expected John to go quietly into the night. They thought he’d accept a nice, quiet retirement post or write a boring memoir about parliamentary procedure.
Instead, John went on News24 and pulled off a political assassination that would make the mafia blush.
As the old saying goes: if you come at the king, you best not miss. And in the DA, there is no bigger, more untouchable king than Tony Leon.
But John didn't just shoot; he brought a rocket launcher.
With a completely straight face, John didn't just complain about his demotion. He blew up the entire moral foundation of the Democratic Alliance. He pointed his finger directly at Tony Leon, the party's sacred founding father, and accused him of running a parallel, "state capture-lite" shadow lobbying ring for Starlink through his private PR firm, Resolve Communications, to push out ministers who didn't cooperate.
For thirty years, the DA has built its entire brand on being the clean, holy, anti-corruption party. They have spent billions telling South Africans that "state capture" is a unique disease that only infects the ANC. And here comes John, their own former leader, casually revealing that the DA’s supreme patriarch is allegedly running corporate lobbying rings right out of the party's central command.
If a highly sophisticated intellectual like Pierre de Vos or Moeletsi Mbeki had written an article accusing the DA of corporate capture, the party's PR machine would have spent weeks calling him a bitter leftist. But when John does it? You can’t dismiss the whistleblower when he’s the guy who was holding the keys to the office for the last six years.
This is why the "fool" label doesn't fit. A fool gets pushed out and whimpers. A political assassin waits until you think he’s completely defeated, pulls a hidden lever, and exposes the secret corporate dealings of your entire family.
John spent years letting the liberal elite look down on his high school education. He let them laugh at his Uber Eats orders and his wife-swapping past. He let them think he was just a simple boy from Durban who got lucky. And the moment they tried to discard him, he used his "clumsiness" to drop a live hand grenade right into the middle of their boardroom.
So, how do we judge him in the end?
He might not have a university degree, he might have put up the worst election posters in history, his chief of staff might think dying cows are funny, and he might still owe the party money for a bucket of KFC. But as the smoke clears over the DA’s corporate headquarters, Tony Leon is ducking for cover, the party’s pristine anti-corruption image is in tatters, and John is still standing, looking completely innocent.
He played us all. He made us believe he was a bumbling idiot, while he was actually planning the ultimate political heist. John Steenhuisen proved that you don't need a fancy degree to dismantle a political empire. You just need a microphone, a complete lack of fear, and a very selective memory.
He isn't the hero we wanted. But as he sits in his new deputy minister's office, eating cold pizza and watching his old bosses panic, John Wickhuisen might just be the accidental assassin that South Africa needs.
* The Bureau of Cynicism is a weekly satirical dispatch from the frontlines of politics, media and public life. Armed with equal parts skepticism, sarcasm and common sense, it investigates hypocrisy, interrogates fashionable narratives and keeps a watchful eye on the ever-shifting goalposts of public discourse.