Helen Zille: DA has a clear path to victory in Joburg + why I’m confident we can rescue my hometown

Helen Zille, former Cape Town mayor and Western Cape premier, has entered the Johannesburg mayoral race, pledging to restore service delivery, tackle corruption, and stabilise fragile coalitions. In an interview with Alec Hogg, she outlined her plan to boost voter turnout, strengthen governance, and rescue South Africa’s economic hub - calling it her “last big political challenge.”.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..Watch here.Listen here.BizNews Reporter .In a wide-ranging conversation with BizNews founder Alec Hogg, veteran Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille discussed her decision to contest the Johannesburg mayoral race, her views on coalition politics, and her plans to restore effective governance in South Africa’s largest city. Zille, a former mayor of Cape Town and Premier of the Western Cape, believes her experience in turning around dysfunctional administrations uniquely equips her for the monumental task ahead.Announced as the DA’s mayoral candidate for Johannesburg on 30 September, Zille’s candidacy has been hailed by political analyst Frans Cronjé as “the best chess move” in recent South African politics. Zille herself says she is determined to restore service delivery and stability to a city beset by financial mismanagement and corruption.“I know what it takes to succeed the ANC in government. I’ve done so twice,” she told Hogg. “If Cape Town and the Western Cape were challenging, Johannesburg is ten times more so. You need someone with experience in dealing with corruption and who understands how internal systems and legislation work.”.A city in decline.Johannesburg, once Africa’s economic powerhouse, has seen years of decline under unstable coalition governments. Zille blames what she calls “extortion politics,” where small parties in fragmented coalitions wield disproportionate power. “Once you have a nine or ten-party coalition, you will have musical mayors,” she warned. “Each small party can decide to switch sides for its own interests, and that collapses governance.”She is pushing for the introduction of a 2% electoral threshold to prevent micro-parties from destabilising councils, similar to systems used in countries like Germany and Denmark. “We have to get thresholds in, otherwise we end up with ten-party coalitions that can’t govern,” Zille said.Zille also took aim at former Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba, founder of ActionSA, accusing him of capitulating to the EFF during his term. “As I understand it from insiders, Herman effectively gave City Power to the EFF,” she claimed. “That’s where the rot started - and today City Power is in the red by R16 billion.”.The DA’s strategy for victory.Zille is confident that the DA can significantly improve on its 2021 municipal election performance, when it secured 26% of the Johannesburg vote. Her focus, however, is on voter turnout.“If every single person who voted DA last time brings just one other person to the polls who didn’t vote then, we get an overall majority,” she explained. Low turnout, she argues, cost the DA as many as 35 seats in 2021.Zille also believes many DA supporters misunderstand how local elections work. “People think that if they live in a safe DA ward, they don’t need to vote — their councillor will win anyway,” she said. “But they don’t realise their ward vote counts twice because ward and proportional representation votes are added together. If you don’t vote, you’re robbing us of three votes.”Her campaign, she said, will focus on five key areas: water, electricity, roads, bylaw enforcement, and revitalising Johannesburg’s smaller central business districts..On coalitions and governance.Asked whether she would consider working with the EFF again, Zille was unequivocal. “I was dead against it in 2016. They share none of our values, and values translate into policies and practice. Once the EFF votes you in, they demand their pound of flesh every time - it’s a permanent extortion racket.”Zille expressed frustration at the ANC’s conduct in national and provincial coalition talks, saying the ruling party’s negotiators had tried to “manipulate” the DA into accepting powerless positions in Gauteng’s provincial government. “They offered us three irrelevant portfolios with almost no budget, just to capture us politically,” she said. “We refused. It’s better to stay in opposition than to be complicit.”.A lifetime of political battle.Reflecting on her six decades in politics, Zille said her motivation remains unchanged: ensuring South Africa succeeds as a democracy. “I’ve been focused on getting the political architecture of South Africa right since I was 15,” she said. “If we want to rescue South Africa, it’s the politics, stupid. Before you can fix the economy, you must fix the politics.”Zille admits the Johannesburg campaign is her “last big challenge”, but she remains optimistic. “If DA voters understand what’s at stake and turn out in large numbers, we can win. If not, I’ll keep fighting from opposition - or finally go home to my husband in Cape Town.”Whether she wins or not, Helen Zille’s latest political mission captures both her determination and her belief that South Africa’s future still depends on strong, principled governance.

Helen Zille: DA has a clear path to victory in Joburg + why I’m confident we can rescue my hometown

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