Democratic Alliance leader and Minister of Agriculture in the government of national unity (GNU) John Steenhuisen has quietly appointed an alt-right podcaster as the chief of staff in his department, it emerged this week. The move has caused consternation within the DA and expressions of concern even from longstanding DA supporters.
Steenhuisen has defended the appointment of Roman Cabanac on the grounds of Cabanac’s legal experience, although it is unclear if Cabanac has completed his law articles. But the reality is that Cabanac is notoriously one of the most divisive, race-baiting voices on local social media – a fact of which Steenhuisen cannot possibly claim to be unaware.
The evidence that both Steenhuisen and Cabanac are fully aware of his reputation is found in the fact that Cabanac appears to have frantically deleted thousands of tweets after his role became public knowledge.
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The skills for which Steenhuisen claims he appointed Cabanac – an eye for detail and an LLB degree – are hardly in critically short supply in South Africa. Steenhuisen’s appointment of Cabanac, then, can only be read as an endorsement of a person who has previously boasted on his podcast about enjoying a warm relationship with Steenhuisen.
The chief of staff to the Minister of Agriculture is now someone who regularly rails against the “green agenda” and has previously tweeted that climate change should be of “zero” importance to the average South African.
Chief of staff is an ‘inward facing position’: Steenhuisen
When Daily Maverick asked Steenhuisen on Tuesday if Cabanac possessed any experience in the agricultural sector which might make his appointment more logical, Steenhuisen responded:
“He does not require experience in agriculture as the position is an inward-facing administrative position that manages staff and workflows. It requires an attention to detail and understanding of the workflow of documents and briefings as well as legal papers, appeals and other processes.
“Mr Cabanac has an LLB degree and has worked as a legal practitioner specialising in deceased estates for over 12 years… this experience more than qualifies him to be able to perform the functions required of a chief of staff.”
The choice of chief of staff is at the discretion of the relevant minister. It is a position on the third highest salary band in all of government, currently worth almost R1.4-million annually in taxpayers’ money.
The post generally requires “extensive management experience, an understanding of ministerial services and parliamentary functions to take charge of the overall management of the ministry, [and] knowledge of the Public Service Management Framework and Public Finance Management Act”, according to a Mail & Guardian article exploring the controversial appointment of Jacob Zuma’s daughter to a chief of staff role while her father was president.
There is no suggestion that Cabanac fits this bill.
Indeed, his LinkedIn profile makes it clear that his sole focus is building up his online influencer status, with a bio that reads: “With a huge fan base of over 50,000 subscribers and an astonishing 15 million views, on Youtube, I specialise in spicing up everyday tales, one short video at a time.”
The chief of staff role differs in specifics depending on the department and the minister, but the relevant person is, notes the Mail & Guardian, “responsible for the overall management of staff and the office’s budget in the ministry, making it a very powerful position”.
In a past job ad for a chief of staff to the Dirco minister, it is specified that responsibilities include “personally [liaising] with internal and external role players”, serving as a “link between the executing authority and the institutions within the portfolio of the executing authority” and liaising “with relevant role-players in the constituency and other political structures”.
Not, by any means, entirely “inward-facing”, in other words.
History of inflammatory statements
Cabanac, as mentioned, has sanitised his Twitter feed in recent days – a process which must have been extraordinarily time-consuming given the sheer volume of inflammatory remarks.
The Twitter account of his podcast, Morning Shot, gives a taste of it.
There, over the past year, Cabanac has referred to President Cyril Ramaphosa as a “p*es”, termed ANC Secretary General Fikile Mbalula “handicapped”, and referred to Ramaphosa’s spokesperson as “Cyril’s Spokesretard”.
Cabanac, who is a Trump supporter, openly pro-Putin and enjoys mocking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, also tweeted that South Africa could “learn from Viktor Orban”, the Hungarian strongman who has dismantled democracy in that country.
On his podcast, Cabanac has certain recurring preoccupations: taunting environmentalists and expressing contempt for concepts like “green energy” or the “just transition”; raging against South African NGOs, and railing against the decline of the “West”.
He is also a mouthpiece for standard talking points of the alt-right, including the concept of the Great Reset: a conspiracy theory about socialist “globalists” secretly pulling the strings. A hatred for George Soros and Bill Gates is part of the same package, which is often also wrapped up in dog-whistle anti-semitism.
One of Cabanac’s few remaining current tweets is a retweet from Andrew Torba, a notorious anti-semite who runs an extremist website.
The most offensive material is, however, in his deleted tweets – several of which were sufficiently abhorrent to be screengrabbed by social media users at the time. In them, Cabanac repeatedly refers derisively to the “Bantu tribe” or “Bantu people”.
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In another, he flirts with apartheid denialism by hinting that the Sharpeville massacre – in which 69 protestors were killed by apartheid police – may not have happened in the manner history records.
The Institute of Race Relations’ Gabriel Crouse also wrote on Tuesday for News24 that Cabanac posted shortly before the 2024 elections: “The DA is a constant reminder that blacks are not liberals. If you want to be a liberal party, it cannot be black-run.”
DA leadership has to take responsibility
The news of Cabanac’s appointment might seem downright trivial in the same week that the (ANC) Minister of Justice was exposed for allegedly playing her part in the looting of VBS Bank.
But the DA has constantly urged South Africa to hold it to different, higher standards. On a section of its website dedicated to outlawing cadre deployment, the party writes: “The DA has proposed a new law that will ensure that jobs go to all South Africans (based on merit), and not devoted ANC friends (lacking competency and integrity).”
It is simply ludicrous to suggest that Roman Cabanac – a podcaster who seems to draw up wills on the side – is the most qualified candidate to serve as chief of staff to the Minister of Agriculture. Yet if the DA was in government, South Africa was repeatedly assured, the best and the brightest would get these roles – rather than “devoted friends”.
This photo of Roman Cabanac and Renaldo Gouws was posted on X, formerly Twitter, with the caption: 'Happy to see @RomanCabanac out on parole in Nelson Mandela Bay,' on 15 October 2021. (Photo: X / @renaldogouws
But the most astonishing aspect of this episode is its timing. Steenhuisen appointed Cabanac on the heels of the scandal involving Renaldo Gouws, the DA MP suspended for making racist videos (but who is still taking his place in Parliament currently).
On that occasion, the defence from DA leadership seemed to be that they were unaware of the true nature of some of Gouws’ videos. This in itself rings exceptionally hollow, as multiple DA insiders have told Daily Maverick that concerns were raised previously within the party about Gouws’ social media conduct a number of times.
Cabanac and Gouws are cut from identical cloth in terms of their self-promotion as shitposting right-wing provocateurs, but Gouws was in addition at least an apparently fairly effective ward councillor. Cabanac doesn’t even have that to his name.
How Steenhuisen could witness the outrage – and hurt – from South Africans around the Gouws revelations and decide immediately afterwards to appoint another podcast bro as his right-hand man truly beggars belief. Some have suggested it is the ultimate illustration of the drift to the right that the DA is taking under Steenhuisen’s leadership.
But for those who want the GNU to succeed, which is surely the majority of reasonable South Africans, there is a more worrying concern. There are significant parts of the ANC, opponents of Cyril Ramaphosa, still implacably opposed to the idea of a coalition government with the DA.
Why is Steenhuisen offering them more ammunition? DM