In the run-up to the 1999 election, I got a chance to interview the then Democratic Party leader Tony Leon. Leon had energetically led the DP (now the DA) in the first five years of democracy, giving it a powerful voice as it built itself up from an entity that had won just 1.7% of the votes in the 1994 election to something bigger and better.
The DA cast itself then, as it does now, as the party of clean government. A significant reason for the party’s growth to 22% of the vote in 2024 is that it convinced a large part of the electorate that it is indeed the party of clean government.
When I arrived at the Leon interview, he had copies of my articles spread out on the table in front of him. He had underlined sentences and paragraphs he disagreed with. He intimated that I was possibly an unethical, captured journalist who was an ANC lapdog and would not treat him fairly.
I didn’t mind. I knew that Leon was out on the hustings and trying to rattle me into writing a sweetheart piece on him. Crucially, he had no power over me. He could intimate and intimidate all he liked, but he couldn’t fire me. He could make me think about my prejudices, sure, but ultimately he did not wield power over me.
He wields power in the DA and over its deployees. He may have left the party leadership in 2007, but he is a key cog in everything that the party does, in who ascends and descends, and in what its deployees to the GNU do.
His power and its exercise lie at the heart of the revelations by recently ousted DA leader John Steenhuisen that Leon’s public relations company, Resolve Communications, had for years pressured the party’s deployees in local government and, in recent times, GNU ministers (from the DA) on behalf of its clients such as billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink.
Steenhuisen told News24 that Resolve targeted officials such as communications minister Solly Malatsi; current agriculture minister Willie Aucamp in his previous role as minister of forestry, fisheries & the environment; and himself (Steenhuisen) during his tenure as minister of agriculture. Former leaders in the party, such as ActionSA founder Herman Mashaba, have made similar claims.
Leon, of all people, should be able to see that this saga stinks to high heaven
Leon is accused of state capture. He has countered that what he was doing was good old regular public affairs — bringing citizen interests to the attention of policymakers to ensure that the result of their work is informed and of the highest possible quality.
He is being deliberately obtuse. The key question is: having been a key figure in the construction of the GNU (he was among the top architects of the structure in the DA) and given his huge influence over the party since he stepped down as leader in 2007, did he abuse his power to pressure his junior DA colleagues to do his bidding? It is hugely suspicious that no ANC minister has claimed Leon or members of Resolve tried to influence them. It is the DA deployees and ministers who have been targeted. Why? Is it because Leon held sway over them?
Leon can quote you chapter and verse about the relationship between power and corruption. Of leaders past and present in South Africa’s political firmament, he is the most eloquent and knowledgeable about abuse of power and abuse of access to power. Did he, therefore, abuse his seniority and power over DA ministers to secure his clients’ interests, to consolidate their dominance over, say, communications policy, or to protect them from policies that they may have deemed inimical to their mission?
Last week, Leon wrote that state capture “corrodes democracy” while the art of public affairs “is what makes democracy function”. He knows that the line between the two gets murky quickly when a powerful figure (as he is) has one foot among powerful politicians and another in the practice of public affairs. Using his power among and over the DA’s cabinet members, it is easy for him to subvert public affairs practice into state capture and to co-opt public policy for his clients’ financial benefit.
It’s not public interest. Leon, of all people, should be able to see that this saga stinks to high heaven. He should be formally investigated and punished if he did abuse his power. As a younger Leon would have said, his actions are deeply un-DA.
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