The euphoria around Helen Zille’s campaign to be Joburg mayor could “very, very easily” become a nightmare for the city if the DA doesn’t get an overall majority, she says.
The latest polls give the DA 39%, which is up from 26% in the last local government elections and “a bloody big thing. But we’ve got to get more.”
Without an overall majority, meaning more than 50%, it will be “extremely hard” to prevent a doomsday coalition that will complete the city of Joburg’s collapse, the extent of which she underestimated, she admits. “I got the numbers right because we did research. But the numbers are theoretical until you hit the ground.”
What’s shaken her most is the number and “complete deprivation” of informal settlements in Joburg. “Just to look at one of these, and there are over 300, really shocks me.” Even in relatively privileged suburbs, such as the one where she’s staying, water and electricity outages are regular occurrences.
It will take an overall majority in the 270-seat council to even begin turning this around, she says. “Because then you can actually get on with doing what you’re supposed to be doing, and you don’t have to survive from council meeting to council meeting.”
So how confident is she about getting an overall majority? “It would just be insane to be confident about that.” It would require every single one of 490,000 potential DA supporters going out to register and coming out to vote DA on both ballots, which is far easier said than done.
“People are just not interested in politics. They don’t think there’s a solution, that voting won’t make any difference. The most important thing to get across to people is that we can actually win Joburg, but only if they get registered and vote for us.”
There are “good signs” this message is landing, both in the more than 1,000 gated villages where many DA supporters live and in Soweto where she’s getting “a spectacularly warm reception”. She concedes that translating good signs and warm receptions into votes is “not easy”.
According to a Social Research Foundation (SRF) poll in March, 84% of voters believe the DA, meaning in effect Zille, can fix Joburg, but only 39% will vote for them. If they don’t get more than 50%, “we’ll have to sit down and say ‘what is the least bad option’. Not just for the DA but for Joburg.”
This could be an alliance with the ANC, which according to the poll is likely to get 30% of the vote. The problem with this is that a populist ANC coalition with the EFF and probably MK is taking shape in Gauteng under premier Panyaza Lesufi.
Zille believes there’ll be many in the ANC branches, where Lesufi is popular, pushing for an ANC-EFF-MK coalition for Joburg. And however much the ANC at a national level may decry this, they won’t be able to stop it. “And that will finally destroy Joburg.”
If the DA fails to get an overall majority, it’s a doomsday scenario that could “very, very easily happen”, she says. If, as per the SRF poll, the ANC gets 30%, EFF 8%, MK 9%, PA 3% and ActionSA 10%, “the ANC will easily get over 50% and you’ll have exactly what we’ve got now, only much, much worse”.
In an election campaign, you say what you’re going to do. Once you’re elected, you better bloody know how you’re going to do it
— Helen Zille
Zille says she has no doubt that ActionSA would sooner form a coalition with the ANC than the DA. This raises the question: why does ActionSA have such a visceral hatred of her? “ActionSA doesn’t have a visceral hatred of me. Herman Mashaba (its leader and former DA mayor) does.”
Why?
“He’s got in his mind the idea that I brought him down out of the mayoralty. I did absolutely nothing of the kind. He knows what brought him down, but he doesn’t want to admit it.”
She refers to Pauli van Wyk and Micah Reddy’s book on Julius Malema which explains “how every single thing that Julius Malema wanted from Herman Mashaba he got because he had the power to bring Mashaba down. Mashaba will argue that he was managing coalition politics. He wasn’t; he was selling out to Julius and the EFF.”
The ANC was going to bring a motion of no confidence in him, and when DA councillors made it clear they wouldn’t be voting for him, he resigned. “And blamed me.”
Even with an overall majority, fixing the city will be “a big, big, big challenge”, she says. “I will face massive opposition from the administration, no question. And from the province. Lesufi will do everything he can to shipwreck us.”
Her priorities will be professionalisation, ruthless cost-cutting, rooting out corruption, ending political patronage, and the budget. With Joburg effectively bankrupt, she’ll need extensive private sector investment. But investors will be reluctant to invest in an unstable coalition, she says. “That’s why an overall majority is so critically important. You’ve got to give investors confidence that the government will last and that it will have sensible policies. You can’t give them that in a multi-party coalition.”
Even with an overall majority, she has “no doubt” she’ll face strong pushback, protests, court action and sabotage. “Absolutely, all the time. Even when I had a much, much lesser challenge in Cape Town and the Western Cape, there was plenty of that.” So overall majority or not, she has no illusions about the formidable challenges that will confront her in Joburg from the word go.
“In an election campaign, you say what you’re going to do. Once you’re elected, you better bloody know how you’re going to do it. It’s a massive, massive task. We are getting as much of it done as we possibly can, but we certainly haven’t got it all worked out.”
She has no doubt that threatening vested interests in the status quo will put a target on her back, if it hasn’t already. “That’s why I’ve got bodyguards. I’ve never wanted bodyguards before, ever. But now I’ve accepted them because I realise that there is a serious risk.” A risk assessment commissioned by the DA confirmed this.
Best-case scenario, how long will it take to return Joburg to the days when it was referred to without irony as an economic hub?
“If we manage to pick our fights well and win them, by the end of the first five-year term people will be able to see a distinct difference. If we go for two terms, they’ll be able to see a major difference.” Will they have done enough in three years to move the needle for the DA come national elections in 2029? “Yes, we want to be the biggest party in 2029. Yes, definitely.”
If they don’t get an overall majority in Joburg, however, then there’s a strong likelihood the DA will be in opposition and she’ll be back with her family in Cape Town. “We’re not going to go into a coalition with anyone unless we take executive mayor. Even if the least bad option may be a coalition with the ANC, they’re not going to take that option to go with us if the EFF, MK and PA are saying to the ANC, ‘we’ll let you have executive mayor’.
“That’s 100% what we’re up against.”
She’s not playing scare politics, she says. She’s just telling voters that while 39% is fantastic, it’s not going to be good enough. “The stakes are massive, but our voters don’t get it. I go to so many places, and I hear, ‘No, I’m not interested in politics’. At meetings of ratepayers’ associations, I’m told, ‘No, we don’t discuss politics here’. I say to them, the choice for Joburg is success or failure, and that’s a political choice.”
Even the least bad option of a coalition with the ANC would be terrible. “How are we going to get rid of ANC corruption in this city? They’ll veto us at every turn; they’ll bring down the government.
“People must be aware that if we don’t get an overall majority, the options are either terrible or absolutely ghastly.”
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