DA leader Helen Zille’s announcement of her run for mayor of Joburg could not have been more perfectly timed.
The city is not in ruins, but it is certainly at one of its worst-ever phases as infrastructure collapses, bylaw enforcement stands still, the administration seizes up and corruption runs rampant.
Things have fallen apart. The Coronationville and Westbury communities have been protesting for weeks about the lack of water.
Even in the most expensive suburbs of the city, the taps now often run dry for weeks on end.
To add salt to Coronationville’s gaping wound, Joburg mayor Dada Morero of the ANC amateurishly told the community that he would have water running within seven days.
The sun rose and set on the seventh day, Thursday last week, without a drop from the taps.
ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa made the mayoral announcement even sweeter for Zille by conceding to 4,000 of his party’s councillors that the DA ran municipalities better.
“There is nothing wrong with us saying we want to go and see what Cape Town is doing, we want to go and see what Stellenbosch is doing, how they craft everything,” he said.
All this tells you that residents of this powerhouse city, including Ramaphosa and other ANC leaders who have now deployed a task team to help the mayor and his executive do their jobs, are gatvol with ANC corruption and with the hopeless incompetents it installed in power the past three years.
If the Joburg election were to be held in the next month, Zille and the DA would lead the ANC because of this gatvol factor alone.
If it were to be held in six months, I posit she would still emerge ahead because nothing significant is about to change in Joburg.
Can Zille win in a year? That will depend on whether the Zille campaign can keep its momentum going, avoid her predilection for race controversy, attract other opposition parties’ voters [there is too much fragmentation, leading to a plethora of ineffective small players] as well as disgruntled ANC folk, and whether the ANC is successful in crafting a powerful new narrative.
Joburg’s transition from the ANC began in 2016, when it polled below 50% for the first time since 1994.
From that year’s 44% it declined to 33% in 2021, while the DA hovered at 26%. The ANC, now also pummelled by the MK party, will no doubt decline further in next year’s election.
Yet it’s worth remembering that the 2021 election was actually a bad outing for the DA.
It saw a decline from the 38% of 2016 due to the very strong emergence of Action SA — a breakaway from the DA — with a haul of 40 out of 270 council seats.
Unlike 2021, in nominating Zille to the Joburg battle the DA is betting on a big-name brand instead of the minnow it fielded in 2021.
A relentless focus on Zille’s successes, as helpfully outlined by Ramaphosa, and the hammering home of how that translates into Joburg’s re-emergence from the doldrums make for a compelling proposition.
Thus Zille’s campaign has a chance to unite the city, the most economically sophisticated capital on the continent by far, around competence, efficiency and delivery of services.
People want that thing the ANC used to bang on about — a capable local government and a dedicated leader.
There are hurdles for Zille. Race will be an issue, but not so much.
ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba on Saturday branded Zille racist and pretty much drew a line from apartheid architect Hendrik Verwoerd to her.
There is much to criticise about Zille, but Mashaba’s hoary race-based criticism will not win him any new voters and will lose him old ones.
He just has to go to his showing in the 2024 national elections to see that his party got a measly 1.2% on the back of this messaging. It just does not work for him or anyone else.
Age is another issue. Zille is now 74. Many have warned that SA is in danger of becoming a gerontocracy, where leaders are way older than the general adult population and will never experience the consequences of their actions.
That is a valid contention in Zille’s case. If she wins, she will be 80 when her term ends.
On the other hand, Mandela was 76 when he came to power in 1994. The real question is: where are the DA’s talented, young, black leaders?
Joburg is not Cape Town. Its problems will not be solved with a cut and paste of what worked in Cape Town and the Western Cape, where Zille made huge strides.
Yet, right now, it’s impossible to identify any candidate, especially from the ANC, who has the experience and the history of success that Joburg desperately needs and that Zille possesses.
It’s hard to see what surprise in candidate or strategy the ANC can produce to stand against Zille.
Zille can win this. Will it be in time to save Joburg?
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