Environmental disaster: John Steenhuisen on how to march backwards

Some awards are earned slowly, through years of dedication and quiet persistence. Others are clinched in a single, inspired moment of political theatre. This year’s Dirtbag of the Year – for whom you overwhelmingly voted – falls firmly into the latter category.

The minister of agriculture and DA leader achieved something remarkable: firing South Africa’s environment minister while he was abroad representing the country at COP30 on climate change in Brazil, then replacing him with a figure widely seen as friendly to captive breeding, hunting interests and the commodification of wild animals. If irony were a greenhouse gas, this would have pushed us well past 1.5 degrees.

Let us pause to appreciate the choreography.

There is no better time to sack your environmental representative than during an international climate and biodiversity summit. It sends a powerful message to the world: South Africa takes environmental governance seriously – just not seriously enough to wait until the minister gets back.

Diplomacy, after all, is overrated. Why bother with continuity, mandate or credibility when you can deliver a surprise reshuffle that lands mid-conference like a tranquilliser dart in a herd of negotiators?

But the true brilliance lies in the replacement. Where Dion George had begun staking out a cautious, reformist position – one that raised uncomfortable questions about captive breeding, canned hunting and South Africa’s reputation as a wildlife laundering hub – his successor arrives with a refreshingly uncomplicated worldview: wildlife is best understood as inventory.

This is governance stripped of nuance. Lions become line items. Conservation becomes throughput. Ethics are replaced by efficiencies. If it breathes, breeds or can be sold to someone with a rifle and a credit card, all the better.

To be clear, this is not merely a disagreement about policy. It is a disagreement about what environmental leadership looks like in 2025.

At a time when South Africa is under global scrutiny – for its biodiversity loss, its captive wildlife industry and its credibility in conservation – the decision signals a firm recommitment to business as usual. Preferably fenced, sedated and monetised.

What elevates this episode from ordinary political misjudgment to award-worthy dirtbaggery is the seamless fusion of ideology and timing. It takes real skill to undermine your own country’s negotiating position while simultaneously appeasing a domestic lobby that has long bristled at scrutiny. A lesser politician might have chosen one or the other. Here, we get both.

And let us not overlook the symbolism. The DA has spent years branding itself as the party of competence, governance and international respectability. What better way to reinforce that image than by removing an environment minister mid-COP and installing someone whose views align more closely with trophy hunters than treaty negotiators?

It’s bold. It’s decisive. It’s spectacularly tone-deaf.

In the end, Dirtbag of the Year is not about malice. It is about impact. It is about decisions that leave the environment weaker, institutions hollowed out and South Africa looking faintly absurd on the world stage. It is about choosing the short-term comfort of powerful interests over the long-term health of ecosystems we claim to value.

There is also something quietly revealing about how easily this moment slid into place. No messy public debate. No extended justification. No serious attempt to explain how sidelining environmental caution in favour of extractive certainty might square with South Africa’s climate commitments or tourism bookings. The move suggests a confidence that the public will either not notice, not care, or be distracted by the next outrage before the implications fully land.

This is how institutional erosion tends to happen: not with a crash, but with a shrug. One minister out, another in. One set of principles quietly retired. A language of “balance” and “economic realities” deployed to smooth over what is, at heart, a narrowing of moral and ecological imagination. It is the politics of lowered expectations, where commitment is framed as naivety and restraint as weakness.

And so the signal is sent – not just to international partners, but to domestic industries watching closely – that scrutiny is negotiable, accountability is optional and the environment will always come second to those who can organise, lobby and donate more effectively. This is not chaos. It is order of a very particular kind.

Which brings us back to the award itself. Dirtbag of the Year is not given lightly. It is reserved for moments where power is exercised with such indifference to consequence that satire becomes the only remaining tool of response. On that measure, this nomination is not merely deserved; it is exemplary.

For this rare achievement – fusing poor timing, questionable priorities and international embarrassment into a single administrative act – the minister has earned his nomination. One hopes he will accept it in the spirit intended. Preferably not while someone else is speaking on our behalf. DM

Runners-up

From imprisoning scientists to sabotaging global treaties, these two forces showed how profits and power can override science, justice, and the planet.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.