OLIVER METH | The DA can’t out-communicate this one

I’ve spent enough years working in journalism and strategic communications to know that political crises rarely begin with the scandal everyone is talking about.

They begin much earlier, when the story an organisation tells about itself slowly starts drifting away from the reality people experience. That’s when reputations become vulnerable and when carefully built political brands begin to crack.

That is why the latest DA saga matters. Yes, it revolves around disputed allegations involving one of its founding former DA leaders, Tony Leon, and his public affairs firm, Resolve Communications.

And yes, it has triggered a very public fallout between former DA leader John Steenhuisen and current party leader and Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis. Though these remain allegations.

Leon has denied wrongdoing, Resolve Communications has rejected any suggestion of improper influence and there have been no findings establishing unlawful conduct.

But I don’t think that’s the most important story. The bigger story is that the DA suddenly finds itself confronting the very political questions it has spent nearly two decades asking of the ANC: questions about influence, proximity to power, lobbying, political relationships and public trust. That alone should concern the party.

According to allegations raised publicly by Steenhuisen, Resolve Communications sought privileged access to DA ministers on behalf of clients. Earlier allegations also suggested Leon approached then-Tshwane mayor Solly Msimanga and then-Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba regarding communications work involving Resolve.

Those claims remain contested and deserve to be tested on evidence rather than political rhetoric. But politics doesn’t operate only in courtrooms. It operates in the court of public perception and one of the biggest misconceptions about state capture is that people think it started with billions of rand disappearing from state-owned enterprises, looted by the Guptas.

It didn’t. State capture began with influence, with access and politically connected people believing that proximity to power could create opportunities unavailable to everyone else.

The money came later, the institutional collapse is still evident and the public outrage continues. That’s why these allegations are politically explosive, not because they prove the DA has become the ANC. They don’t, but because they echo a political culture the DA has spent years promising South Africans it would never tolerate.

That brings me to what I think is the real issue. Every successful political party has a brand. Not a logo or a slogan — a brand. The ANC built its identity around liberation. The EFF built its brand around economic justice and disruption. MK has wrapped itself in grievance and former statesman Jacob Zuma’s political resurrection. The DA built its brand around something different: competence, constitutionalism, accountability and ethical government.

That didn’t happen by accident. From a communications perspective, the DA has arguably been the most disciplined political organisation in democratic South Africa. And this isn’t praise or criticism. It’s simply an observation from someone who has spent years working in media and communications.

The party understood early that politics isn’t won only through policy. It is won by convincing voters that your story is more believable than your opponent’s.

For years, the DA told South Africans a remarkably consistent story. It was the grown-up in the room. The party that respected institutions. The party that fixed potholes, balanced budgets and believed no one should be above scrutiny.

More importantly, it protected that story with extraordinary discipline. Its messaging was co-ordinated, its media operation was focused and its internal disagreements were usually managed before they became public spectacles.

While the ANC lurched from one internal crisis to another, the DA projected calm, competence and order. That became its competitive advantage.

There is an old saying in reputation management: you cannot communicate your way out of a credibility problem if people believe the underlying issue has not been addressed.

In communications, we often talk about reputational capital. Think of it as trust in the bank. Every consistent decision, every ethical stance and every demonstration of integrity makes a deposit.

Organisations with strong reputations can survive difficult moments because people are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. The DA has spent nearly two decades building that reputational capital. The danger now is that the current controversy strikes at the very foundation on which those deposits were made.

Because the DA’s promise was never simply that it would govern better than the ANC. Its promise was that it represented a different political culture altogether at a much higher standard.

It is also why this moment feels so significant. The allegations involving Resolve Communications arrive as the party is already grappling with visible internal strains.

The public disagreement between Steenhuisen and Hill-Lewis has exposed competing centres of authority. The departures of Lindiwe Mazibuko, Phumzile Van Damme, Mbali Ntuli, Mmusi Maimane and Herman Mashaba raised earlier questions about the party’s direction. The emergence of the Black Caucus reflected concerns among some black leaders about representation, influence and internal decision-making.

None of those developments, on their own, define the DA. But reputations are rarely damaged by one event. They weaken when multiple contradictions begin telling the same story.

This is where political communications collides with political reality. There is an old saying in reputation management: you cannot communicate your way out of a credibility problem if people believe the underlying issue has not been addressed.

Messaging can buy time but it cannot rebuild trust on its own. And I think this is where the DA is playing at, hoping that the saga slowly fades in the public domain as we head towards the local government elections.

For years, the DA excelled at agenda-setting. It framed political debate around corruption, cadre deployment, accountability and state capture, while asking difficult questions of those in power and insisted that appearances matter because public confidence matters.

Now, this week, the messenger has become the message. Instead of asking the difficult questions, the DA is answering them, and instead of defining the narrative, it is reacting to one.

For a party whose greatest strategic strength has been communications discipline, that is a profound shift. Some will dismiss this as little more than a leadership squabble amplified by political opponents. Others will argue the allegations are unproven and should go no further without evidence.

They are right to insist on evidence, but they’re wrong if they believe evidence is the only thing shaping public opinion.

Politics moves faster than legal processes. Voters make judgments long before commissions report or investigations conclude.

They ask themselves a simpler question: does what I’m seeing still match what I’ve been told? That is the question confronting the DA today.

Perhaps this entire saga will ultimately amount to nothing more than an ugly internal dispute in which allegations outpaced facts, and that remains entirely possible.

[The DA] must convince South Africans that the political culture it has spent two decades promoting is still the political culture it practises

Resolve Communications deserves the presumption of innocence and allegations should ultimately stand or fall on evidence.

But the DA faces a different challenge. It must convince South Africans that the political culture it has spent two decades promoting is still the political culture it practises.

That cannot be achieved through better messaging alone because political brands do not collapse because of one scandal. They weaken when the distance between promise and perception becomes too wide.

I’ve always believed the DA’s greatest political achievement wasn’t simply governing Cape Town or the Western Cape. It was convincing millions of South Africans that it represented a fundamentally different way of doing politics and that has been its greatest asset.

It is also why the current controversy is so dangerous. Not because it proves wrongdoing or establishes state capture. But because it places the DA’s most valuable political commodity — its credibility — under scrutiny.

For years, the party reminded South Africans that ethics are measured not only by legality, but by transparency, accountability and public confidence.

It now finds itself being measured by exactly those same standards. And no political communications strategy, no matter how disciplined or sophisticated, can ultimately protect a brand if voters conclude that the story it tells about itself no longer matches reality.

— Oliver Meth is a development and political communications strategist