The DA needs to first address pressing issues here at home

Reporting from war-torn Ukraine, much like a foreign correspondent, Democratic Alliance (DA) leader John Steenhuisen has provided nothing we haven’t seen before from the professional war reporters who have been covering the conflict.

So, the facts he has been finding on his mission to the country could already have been gleaned from the TV screen back home.

Oh? But he is there to make some difference to the awful consequences of the war in increasing fuel and sunflower oil prices for ordinary South Africans?

How will an opposition politician from an African country possibly have any influence on those global geo-strategic issues?

That is a legitimate question to ask the DA, as is the one about why he has not bothered to find facts in any African conflict, nor right at home in the gang-blighted Cape Flats, for example.

Another question which should be asked by the media – because the DA pounces like a hawk on the mere suggestion of the ANC spending on “junkets” – is how much Steenhuisen’s trip cost the party’s donors…

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The fact that DA Federal chair Helen Zille can bat that question away with an arrogant, dismissive “huh?” to our reporter, shows the party is increasingly bending to the will of its self-absorbed leadership.

In merely asking those questions, we will, no doubt, be attacked by the DA disciples, in much the same way as they rallied on Tuesday to answer a desperate WhatsApp call from the party to vote in favour of Steenhuisen’s mission in a TV opinion poll.

This country needs the DA.

And it needs a DA which functions so it can pursue our pressing local issues. It needs a DA which shows how cities, towns and provinces can, and should, be run – well and ethically.

What we don’t need is a party whose leaders grandstand for publicity.