The revelations surrounding Tony Leon and Resolve Communications expose the Democratic Alliance's alleged hypocrisy in governance and accountability, writes Carl Niehaus.
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The Economic Freedom Fighters have never minced our words when confronting corruption, state capture and the manipulation of public institutions for private gain. We have led and consistently led the charge against Cyril Ramaphosa on the Phala Phala matter and all the corruption and financial irregularities revealed by that debacle. We are continuing to do so now in the Section 89 impeachment committee. We stood firm against the criminal networks such as the Guptas and others that looted our state under Jacob Zuma. We demanded accountability without fear or favour. The same uncompromising standard must be applied to the Democratic Alliance and its former leader, Tony Leon.
John Steenhuisen’s recent explosive revelations have torn away the DA’s carefully cultivated mask. The former DA leader described how Resolve Communications — the public affairs firm chaired by Tony Leon and run by former DA Chief Executive Officer Paul Boughey — systematically used its political proximity to DA ministers in the Government of National Unity to facilitate meetings between those ministers and the firm’s private corporate clients. Among the most brazen examples: arranging access for Elon Musk’s Starlink to Communications Minister Solly Malatsi in order to accelerate regulatory approvals for Starlink’s operating licence. At the same time, Steenhuisen alleged, Resolve was orchestrating a public campaign against him over the Foot-and-Mouth Disease crisis through the lobby group FMD Response SA. While the firm privately lobbied him for its clients, it publicly hounded him on the very portfolio he held.
Yet, we must pause and ask the uncomfortable question that Steenhuisen’s sudden candour raises. He was at the very heart of the DA leadership for years. He evidently possessed knowledge of these arrangements and irregularities for quite some time. Why does he only now choose to reveal them? The timing is revealing. Steenhuisen speaks out only after his demotion from minister to deputy minister and his removal from the DA leadership by the new guard under Geordin Hill-Lewis. This does not cover him in glory. It simply means that now that he has personal beef with the current DA leadership, he has decided to spill the beans. The question must be asked: why now, when he has for so long known about these irregularities and manifestations of corruption? What else is still going to come out which has been kept under covers all this time? A true servant of the people would have spoken out the moment the rot became clear, not waited until his own position was threatened.
This selective disclosure does not diminish the damning nature of what Steenhuisen has placed on the public record. It merely confirms that the entire DA ecosystem is infected with the same self-serving culture it claims to oppose. The revelations stand as powerful evidence against Tony Leon and Resolve Communications. They do not rehabilitate Steenhuisen or the party he helped lead for so long.
This is not the behaviour of a party that has spent two decades preaching clean governance, transparency and the rule of law. This is the conduct of an elite network that believes its proximity to power entitles it to shape policy for paying clients behind closed doors. Dr Reneva Fourie captured the moment with devastating precision in her IOL opinion piece. She described these revelations as exposing “a staggering contradiction” in the DA’s narrative. While the DA posed as the uncompromising defender against state capture, it now stands accused of tolerating — indeed facilitating — the capture of policy by its own connected insiders. Fourie is right. The public has heard the ANC’s defensive denials before. We will not accept the same from the DA.
The hypocrisy runs deeper than one firm, the DA receives massive funding from a narrow circle of wealthy individuals and entities. Michiel le Roux, co-founder of Capitec, has donated R58 million to the DA in the past 12 months through his Fynbos Kapitaal and Fynbos Ekwiteit vehicles — the largest individual political donation in South African history since the Political Party Funding Act came into force. The Oppenheimer family has contributed over R62 million to the DA, while Martin Moshal has provided significant sums in the tens of millions cumulatively. In return, the DA advances policy positions that directly serve those interests: fierce opposition to Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment, the push for the Economic Inclusion for All Bill that would strip away set-asides for historically disadvantaged South Africans, and a foreign policy orientation aligned with white monopoly capital and international corporate agendas, in direct opposition to radical economic transformation and the economic empowerment of the majority of black South Africans.
This is elite capture dressed up as so-called principle. It is the same pattern that saw Public Protector findings against Helen Zille for using her office to benefit her son’s company, Paper Video, in a tablets tender. It is the same pattern visible in questionable Western Cape procurement processes and the abrupt sidelining of Minister Dion George — who had taken decisive steps to crack down on captive lion breeding — in favour of Willie Aucamp, a senior Democratic Alliance figure and former national spokesperson whose family runs commercial wildlife breeding and hunting operations, including Aucamp Farming and Bellevue Hunting Safaris. The DA’s much-vaunted “clean governance” in the Western Cape has always been selective — fiercely applied to political opponents, conveniently elastic when its own networks are involved.
Resolve has responded with the usual disclaimers that companies come up with under such circumstances, limply insisting that all its work is “lawful and transparent”. The reality is that these denials do not erase the questions Steenhuisen has placed on the public record. They do not explain why a firm chaired by a former DA leader and staffed by former DA executives should enjoy privileged access to GNU ministers while simultaneously running public campaigns against those same ministers when it suits their clients. They do not address why South Africa still has no statutory lobbying register requiring disclosure of clients, meetings and expenditures — a gap that allows this kind of influence to flourish in the shadows.
The Economic Freedom Fighters say without hesitation: everything about Resolve Communications must be revealed. Every client. Every meeting arranged with ministers. Every policy intervention made on behalf of private interests. The Public Protector must investigate. Parliament must summon those involved. Where any laws were broken, the National Prosecuting Authority and the Hawks must act without fear or favour. The DA cannot be allowed to hide behind its self-proclaimed moral superiority while its networks operate exactly like the influence peddlers it once condemned. And because Steenhuisen’s timing reveals that even the whistleblower may be driven by factional score-settling rather than principle, independent investigation is more necessary than ever. What else has been suppressed? What other deals remain hidden?
No one in South Africa is above the law. Not ANC cadres. Not EFF members. Not DA ministers or their former leaders. The same Constitution that the DA claims to defend demands equal application of the law. When revelations point to improper influence over GNU ministers on matters as significant as satellite communications licensing and agricultural crisis response — and when the timing of those revelations itself smells of personal grievance — the country has a right and a duty to know the full truth. Anything less is a continuation of the very state manipulation we have fought against for decades.
We in the EFF have always understood that corruption wears many faces. It is not only the crude looting of state-owned enterprises. It is also the quiet, respectable capture of policy by well-connected firms that trade on old political relationships. It is the hypocrisy of a party that lectures the nation on ethics while its own former leader’s company allegedly trades access for influence — and while even its internal critics only speak when their own positions are on the line. This form of capture is insidious precisely because it is defended as normal lobbying in an open society. It is not normal. It is a betrayal of the people’s sovereignty.
The DA entered the so-called Government of National Unity promising stability and clean administration. The scandal is not only about Tony Leon and Resolve Communications, but the whole system that enabled it — and the selective silence that protected it for so long. It is the very system the DA has defended and participates in.
The Economic Freedom Fighters therefore make a clarion call: Let every document, every meeting, every client list of Resolve Communications be placed before the people of South Africa. Let investigations proceed without political interference from any quarter. Let the law treat the DA exactly as it would treat any other formation accused of influence peddling. If corruption or improper conduct is proven, let there be consequences — for Leon, for Boughey, for any minister who allowed private interests to dictate the pace of public policy, and for those who knew and stayed silent until it suited them. No sacred cows. No special pleading. No one above the law.
South Africa’s people have suffered enough from captured institutions and elite pacts. The time for selective outrage and convenient disclosures is over. The time for full exposure and equal justice is now.
Carl Niehaus
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* Carl Niehaus is an EFF Member of Parliament.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL.