South Africa’s brightest, toughest and most visionary minds are now able to throw their hats in the ring as the ANC’s mayoral candidate for Joburg in the November local government elections. The party has said it will look outside its own ranks — but who would be willing to take a job associated with a tainted, weakened ANC?
Whoever gets it, the mayoralty will be the ultimate hospital pass. The city has been almost broken by incompetence and corruption.
The ANC has been going back to its roots to seek out potential takers. They include former unionist and Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa, the driving force behind the Gautrain project in the early 2000s; cleric and struggle stalwart Frank Chikane; and many other prominent veterans.
But whoever runs on the party ticket can expect to be hemmed in by ANC factions, patronage networks and ideologues.
Very few capable people will be willing to enter the fray, says former city manager Ketso Gordhan. He was instrumental in reconstructing Joburg in the early 2000s and setting up City Power and Joburg Water, both now dysfunctional.
Gordhan worked under what now seems to have been the visionary leadership of Kenny Fihla, then the finance MMC and now CEO of Absa. Ironically, there are reports that Fihla has been approached to stand for the mayoral job — by the same ANC that, under then mayor Parks Tau, deemed him and Gordhan personae non gratae by the time they left.
It was under Tau that the revenue collection model was centralised, in a shift from the system Fihla and Gordhan had in place to ring-fence revenue from water and electricity sales and channel it towards maintenance. That decision by Tau, now being reversed, was at the root of the gathering collapse of the city.
Gordhan has not been approached and has no interest in the post itself. However, he is willing to provide advice and help to the incoming administration, “out of love” for the city.
In an interview with the FM, he ponders whether a person such as former Reserve Bank governor Gill Marcus would have the appetite and grit required for the post. “You really need someone of that calibre,” he says.
But it all comes back to the ANC, and how much leeway a candidate would have to run things their way. “If you want to bring an ANC person, then you want to bring somebody who’s more cynical about the ANC — not a hack, but someone with the skills from a management point of view,” says Gordhan, adding that Marcus fits this description.
Bringing in someone who would simply toe the party line won’t work. However, “they’re not going to be able to fire people. They’re not going to be able to make the changes that are necessary, or take on the unions, or do the things that look ideologically dodgy,” he says.
There are no easy decisions, even if you’re just talking about what you will prioritise vs what you won’t
— Ketso Gordhan
It is for this reason that Gordhan strongly believes the ANC’s time has come and gone, and another party should run the city.
He says there are a few key attributes required of potential candidates. Visionary leadership is the first. The second is willingness to take tough political decisions and even “piss people off”, the kind of leadership Joburg had in Fihla.
“Back then we had some really good people. They were not complicit in corruption. Today’s leadership, even if they can claim they are not involved personally in corruption, they are complicit because they definitely know what’s going on but feel powerless to do anything about it.”
Gordhan, like millions of Joburg residents, is desperate to see a turnaround in a city that is on the edge of financial ruin after years of mismanagement. The coming election offers perhaps the city’s last chance for recovery.
“There are no easy decisions, even if you’re just talking about what you will prioritise vs what you won’t. The ANC has always fallen victim to ‘We’ll do everything about everything’,” he says. The result is that nothing changes.
The incoming mayor must be willing to build massive partnerships across the board. The city is not in a financial position to fix everything on its own, says Gordhan.
“There’s so much goodwill around the city. People are willing to do stuff. You need a mayor who understands that and takes that opportunity and maximises what they can get out of it.
“I don’t think it’s ideological any more. I think it’s now reached the point where it’s about being pragmatic. It’s not about capitalism vs socialism. Having a mayor who wants to work on a public-private partnership model and is willing to form partnerships with civil society is important.”
Gordhan adds that the new mayor will have to deal with the trade unions and the general low calibre (and size) of its 40,000-strong bureaucracy.
The ANC’s desperation to find a star mayoral candidate is partly motivated by the mayoral campaign of the DA’s Helen Zille, who has a solid record of administrative achievements as mayor of Cape Town and premier of the Western Cape. Her campaign is laser-focused on the practicalities of service delivery, the area where the ANC is most vulnerable.
Finding the right personality to run for mayor would be only the start for the ANC. If it can’t find someone from within the party, almost by definition whoever it finds will have no constituency in any ANC faction. And whoever the candidate is would have to be acceptable to potential coalition partners, as the ANC almost certainly won’t get an overall majority.
If the current Gauteng provincial arrangement is any guide, the likely coalition partners will be the EFF, the MK Party and the Patriotic Alliance — and these populists would resist the necessary reforms and any crackdown on corruption.
That leaves the DA and the opportunity for the ANC to go into a coalition with it, drawing on the parties’ experience in the GNU that was produced by the 2024 election. That would make the rescue of Joburg more likely.
In the end it will depend on how many votes the two largest parties get, which in turn will confer degrees of legitimacy in negotiations that will take the governance of the city into uncharted waters.
Marrian is a political analyst at the Bureau for Economic Research
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