‘Still a daughter of Johannesburg’: The Democratic Alliance’s federal chair, Helen Zille, now wants to fix Johannesburg if she’s elected mayor. Photo: DA/Helen Zille
Democratic Alliance (DA) Johannesburg mayoral candidate Helen Zille, buoyed by internal polls showing she is the best candidate for the job, has said she won’t run for any other position at the party’s elective congress next year, suggesting she is confident of winning a mandate to fix the troubled metro.
The DA federal chair was this week on a charm offensive in Johannesburg after her announcement last week as the party’s candidate for mayor of South Africa’s economic hub. She has promised to fix the city’s service delivery problems, including the water crisis that has seen some suburbs run dry for weeks on end.
“I am going to contest no position in the [DA] congress [next year]. I am not standing for any leadership position in the party,” she told the Mail & Guardian on Wednesday.
It’s not yet clear who Zille will run against in the battle for Joburg, with only the Patriotic Alliance announcing Kenny Kunene as its mayoral candidate. The ANC, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party and Action SA have yet to decide on their candidates.
Zille’s candidature is seen as strategic by some DA members who believe she will bring the party more votes in Johannesburg in next year’s local government elections, based on the internal polling.
Asked whether she would be comfortable being only a councillor of the DA in the city of Johannesburg, if her mayoral bid fails, Zille responded: “We’ll see when we get there.”
She said her reason for contesting in the city was because of her desire for “a wonderful country” not only for her own grandchildren but for all South Africans.
“I want a great country that can fulfil her own promise and South Africa can be the best country in the world. I was born in Johannesburg, I was raised in Johannesburg, I went to school, university and got my driver’s license in Johannesburg. I’m still a daughter of Johannesburg. If we can’t get Johannesburg right, we can’t get South Africa right,” she said.
The city has grappled with acute service delivery failures in recent times, including water cuts, road potholes and traffic lights that are not working, while the inner city is failing to maintain law and order, with dilapidated buildings and infrastructural decay turning Africa’s richest city into an eyesore.
Recently it has seen a wave of violent protests from residents demanding an end to their water woes. The water crisis has largely been attributed to old, decaying infrastructure, which has resulted in constant leakages.
Zille said the crisis has been caused by the failure to fix or maintain infrastructure, leading to the city losing 46% of its water to leaks and burst pipes.
“Johannesburg loses every day as much water as Tshwane uses [daily], and that shows you the root cause of the problem. It is a failure for maintenance for 30 years,” she said.
But she declined to give a timeline of how long it would take her to fix the city, saying this depended on an exact diagnosis of all the problems and an allocation of budget.
“There are many variables in the situation and I can’t say for sure how long it would take now. I don’t have all those details. If you look at potholes, there are 100 000 serious potholes in Johannesburg, that’s huge, and a thousand more potholes are being reported every single week. It would be stupid of me to say I can fix those potholes within a defined amount of time,” she said.
“I have got to look at how much money we can put into the road maintenance budget and by then I don’t know how many potholes are going to be.”
Zille said the reason for Johannesburg’s problems was that residents insisted on still voting for the ANC despite its deployees stealing money and failing to maintain infrastructure.
“If people vote for a corrupt government, that is what they will get; if people vote for corruption every election, that is what they will get.”
The Johannesburg mayorship candidacy is seen by some as Zille’s lifeline in the DA.
Sources said she and party leader John Steenhuisen were not seeing eye to eye on several issues, creating a power struggle.
Asked about this earlier this month, DA Gauteng leader Solly Msimanga denied to the M&G that there was any power struggle, although he conceded there were different “ideological engagements”.
This week Zille denied being part of a Cape Town faction, as has been suggested by some, insisting that she stands for South Africa and believes the country will work when its big cities work.
“I have no intention of contesting a leadership position in the DA again. I never have, so no one has to get rid of me and no one has to get me off the way. Even if I did want to, I would put my hat in the ring and we would compete and we would decide democratically. No one is trying to get me out of the way of anything,” she said.
Some DA members in the Johannesburg council believe that Zille, who is 74, should have stayed in an advisory role and left the mayoral candidacy to a younger person. But Zille said things did not work like that in the DA.
“If you want a position, you apply for it, and then you compete with the other people who apply for it, that is how it works. Anybody was welcome to apply and anyone was welcome to compete,” she said.
Shifting to national politics, Zille said it would not be her decision whether the DA stayed in the government of national unity (GNU) should South Africa’s deputy president Paul Mashatile succeed Cyril Ramaphosa for the top job.
With Mashatile increasingly likely to take over from Ramaphosa as ANC president in the party’s 2027 elective conference, many believe the DA would be sidelined in the GNU, because Mashatile is seen as one of those would rather work with the EFF and the Jacob Zuma-led MK party.
In February, the DA went to the Union Buildings to deliver a dossier of corruption allegations against Mashatile to Ramaphosa, threatening to open a criminal case if he did not act.
“In the DA, we run a democratic organisation. I can’t say what the DA will do or won’t do, I can’t tell the DA what to do or not to do, and I won’t even be in the leadership position in that state. So it is certainly not my decision,” Zille said this week.
Asked whether she could work with Mashatile, she responded: “In politics, you can rarely choose the best option, you can also very rarely choose the second best option because they are not on the table. You have to choose the least bad option.”