It’s a women’s race for the post of mayor in Cape Town — the only metropole where female public leadership goes beyond lip service to the ballot paper.
The battle is on between incumbent African National Congress executive mayor Nomaindia Mfeketo and Democratic Alliance MP Helen Zille.
And if Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille proves rumours right and is named mayoral candidate, it will be a three-way power contest.
The prize is significant: two-thirds of the Western Cape’s 4,5-million people live in Cape Town, which has R18-billion of the provincial R21-billion budget.
With ID mayoral candidates for Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni announced on Thursday, De Lille’s playing a hidden hand.
”Many people are asking and saying: ‘Do it!’ At a personal level it’s not an easy decision: it would mean working at local government level as a national leader,” De Lille told the Mail & Guardian. ”I know I can do it.”
In contrast, Zille’s nomination leaked out days before Monday’s sitting of the DA’s federal council could confirm it. The former Western Cape education minister carries the DA’s hopes to recapture Cape Town. It is the only metropole that could be within grasp of the opposition party — if the DA can repeat the 65% to 80% turnout achieved among its supporters in 2000, when it won the city, but lost two years later to the ANC-New National Party cooperation pact.
In keeping with ANC tradition, Mfeketo’s candidacy will be officially announced by the party’s national head office, and only a Machiavellian manoeuvre is expected to prevent this. She’s in the number one slot on the party’s list of candidates. Less than six months ago, she emerged as the most popular ANC member, scoring the most votes after the party’s provincial top five executives at its conference.
Mfeketo and Zille are regarded as strong politicians, each with a track record in public office.
Mfeketo’s second stint as mayor — she first served in the 1990s transitional structure — has, however, been tarnished by a series of tender irregularity scandals.
Zille has survived DA scandals such as the 2002 political funding from convicted German fraudster Jurgen Harksen, but speculation was rife last year that her move to Parliament was triggered by provincial jealousies sparked by her hands-on approach.
Jonathan Faull, senior researcher at the Institute for Democracy in South Africa says both women leaders are ”recognised and charismatic”, but that will not be the deciding factor at the polls.
”The campaign and ability of parties to get their voters to the polls is going to be more important than personalities,” he says.
The 2000 municipal elections heralded the current system; unfamiliar with the new structures, many voters were led by personalities, such as Peter Marais’s brash lead in the DA’s ”Fight Back” campaign.
Still, the charisma factor may come into play should De Lille decide to go for the mayor’s office. She emerged tops in a recent informal sms poll by the Cape Argus.
If De Lille stands as vote catcher for the ID, argues Faull, it implicitly showed the party’s ”weakness of not having developed leadership at local level … with as much brand recognition”.
Politics professor Sheila Meintjes of the University of the Witwatersrand says women’s nominations in wards are more indicative of real advances and women’s meaningful role in government and must be watched carefully.
In 2000, Cape Town voter turnout reached 52%, above the 48% nationally, according to election statistics, but service delivery bottlenecks, particularly over housing and employment, may trigger voter disinterest and apathy.