A real Johnny-come-lately?

Steenhuisen is an accidental leader. He did not so much win the DA top job as stumble into it.

- William Saunderson-Meyer

‘T is the season to be merry - a time of joy, love and generosity. Except in the political jungle, where compassion is always a scarce commodity and the pangas flash all year round.

John Steenhuisen is in the thick of that fray. The DA leader is under pressure on three fronts: a default judgment for credit-card debt; the withdrawal of his DA-issued credit card; and the true reasons for his subsequent sacking of forestry, fisheries and environment minister Dion George.

This week, the George saga got even murkier. Daily Maverick reports Steenhuisen's first attempt to have George removed came at an unscheduled DA federal executive meeting on 15 October, the day he was in Shanghai signing an agricultural export deal. George had been tightening protections around abalone and lion-bone trafficking into China. Daily Maverick sent six questions about this to Steenhuisen's department but was refused an answer.