Listen here.Chris Pappas was set to leave politics for the private sector. Instead, he's back, seeking a second term as uMngeni mayor after talks from colleagues, community leaders and supporters. In this candid interview with Alec Hogg, Pappas explains why he changed course, reflects on the DA's prospects ahead of the 2026 local elections, defends the party amid recent controversies, and outlines his long-term ambitions. He also argues that uMngeni's governance record offers a blueprint for the rest of KwaZulu-Natal..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. 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..Edited transcript of the interview.Alec Hogg: He was tipped as a rising star of the DA. Time magazine noticed him twice. He was the party's premier candidate in KwaZulu-Natal. And by April this year, he told the public he was walking away from the uMngeni mayorship for the private sector, where he had an opportunity. But now he's back, running for a second term. Mayor Chris Pappas joins me. We'll find out what gives.Well, Chris, you've got lots of fans, not just in the Howick/uMngeni region, but all around the country. And when you said that you would not be running for mayor, but leaving for a private sector position, there was a lot of unhappiness about it. What happened, though, that you've changed your mind between April and July?Chris Pappas: How's it, Alec? Nice to see you again. It's been a while.Alec, firstly there was no applicant for my position from my caucus – no natural successor. My caucus members said that they were not going to apply. No one wanted to contest me and they said that I needed to apply. So, essentially, I don't want to use the word sabotaging, but they deliberately ensured that the party had to reopen the process because they didn't want to contest the position.From that then ensued a discussion to say, well, Chris, what is going to happen not just to the DA in the uMngeni Council, but what happens to the broader region? It's not just about politics – it's about business, social services, direction and stability.Whether it was friends and family, the political party or my caucus, there was a discussion around saying, "Listen, what is the responsible thing to do for this area?"Initially, it was a selfish decision to say that after 14 years in politics I'd like to go and do something else for a little bit, grow my skills somewhere else and gain experience somewhere else.But then, to sit down and have that conversation with people who have a genuine interest in the future of this region, and to understand the responsibility of that, shaped my decision.Alec Hogg: Second time that you've given your life, or your heart, to Howick, going back to 2024, where you could have taken the path towards the premiership of KwaZulu-Natal, but you didn't join the provincial legislature. You came back home, as it were.Does this mean that you've put a cap on your career – that you're not that ambitious for higher office? Or is it a bit of a holding pattern for 2029? I hear people within the DA saying that 2029 is going to be their time. How are you reading it?Chris Pappas: Yes, it's the third time, Alec. The first time was when I relinquished my position in the provincial legislature to come back to local government.Firstly, I think local government is where things happen. With respect to my colleagues in higher levels of government, it's a lot of policy, a lot of long-term vision and a lot of speeches. Local government is where decisions actually impact people's lives.As a person who considers myself less of a politician and more of someone who likes to get things done as an administrator, I think this is where my skills are best utilised. But it's home as well. If I can contribute towards protecting that, as opposed to some sort of political hierarchy or political growth, then why not?No, I don't think it's necessarily a cap on where I want to go or could possibly go. I think that sometimes maturity, or career prospects, require one not necessarily to move fast, but to move deliberately.I'm 35 this year, so there's no rush to go anywhere. The skills that I gain by climbing the ladder one rung at a time are important, whether that's in the private sector, the NPO sector, government or administration.So, I think I'm sharpening my skills. As for 2029, that's a whole different question, I guess. The DA as an organisation – Geordin set the target, and that's what we're all working towards. That's no guarantee of positions or anything like that, but I guess when you do want to become an organisation that has more influence in government at a national level, the organisation will require skills at different levels.Alec Hogg: Geordin, did he put any pressure on you to reverse your decision?Chris Pappas: I wouldn't say pressure. Geordin did have a discussion with me. Geordin understands what it's like to be a mayor in the town where you grew up, and to have a passion for local government. I think Geordin is absolutely passionate about local government and what it can do.So, no, no pressure directly. A conversation, yes, but a conversation – not a meeting, per se. We were in the same venue and we had a heart-to-heart, but so did many other people. So, no pressure directly.Alec Hogg: I ask because you are the only municipality in KwaZulu-Natal where the DA has an outright majority. It's almost like when the DA first got into power in Cape Town – they had a template they could show to other people, and we've seen the consequences in the Western Cape.Is that still part of the strategy for the province, or for the DA in the province?Chris Pappas: Yeah, absolutely. We're far from perfect. It's been four and a half years – or four years and eight months, whatever it is – so there's still a lot to do.But I think in that very short space of time we've been able to show, as the DA, what a different sort of government looks like here in KwaZulu-Natal. We've had the IFP and we've had the ANC at various different levels and in different capacities, yet here's a DA-run municipality that has managed to do things very quickly that others haven't been able to do.So yes, it gives us a blueprint locally because our politics are very different to the Western Cape or Gauteng. It also gives us something closer to point to. It's very difficult for a resident in Nongoma to understand how far away Cape Town actually is. But when you say uMngeni, Howick or Mpophomeni, and your own circles are speaking about the same sort of governance with the same sort of successes, it's a lot easier to understand and to visualise. I think that's an important thing.The biggest example is Pietermaritzburg down the road, which is a completely collapsed city. Not even a five-minute drive away, you have a municipality that's managed to claw its way away from collapse and is moving towards something greater.Alec Hogg: Yeah, well, we have family in Pietermaritzburg and we always travel that road towards Hilton. It really is palpable – you can see where your municipality starts and where Pietermaritzburg ends. Even the road changes.But Chris, what about the private sector post that you were looking at? You didn't answer that question. Did you eventually turn it down, or did the opportunity evaporate?Chris Pappas: There have been a few offers, Alec, both from the public sector, the private sector, and also the non-profit sector – mainly working in the advocacy space around developmental issues.So yes, I turned some down, some lapsed, but the offers were still there. And I hope they'll still be there one day when I do decide to move into that space.Alec Hogg: I was wondering whether, when you made the decision initially, the very tragic developments you've experienced among colleagues – the murders and so on – played any role in your thinking. I didn't ask you about it at the time, but was that weighing on your mind, and has that calmed down a bit now?Chris Pappas: No, it wasn't a decision-making factor, or one that I considered in this process.I guess that's because it's still ongoing. Every second week, or at least once a month, we have another sitting of the court case. So you have this lingering issue – both an emotional issue, but also the safety and political issues around that.So no, it wasn't part of the decision-making process.If anything, something like that makes you want to work even harder to try and fix the problems around you, knowing that there are syndicates and people out there who are willing to kill to protect the wrongdoing they're involved in, and the collapse of the state.I guess that's the antithesis of leaving. It motivates you to keep going rather than to walk away.Alec Hogg: Okay, so let's look ahead to 2029. If you are re-elected – and I guess the indications would be fairly strong at the moment – maybe before we get there, do you have polling at that kind of granular level on how well you're doing or what your chances of re-election are?Chris Pappas: The party at a national level wouldn't do polling on a small municipality like ours, so we'd use the provincial trends that they provide to the organisation.But what we've done – you know what Howick is like – is make use of a pool of local skills. We have retirees here, and some of those retirees are former pollsters and statisticians, so we conduct and fund our own polling.I can't give you the results yet because they're not complete. We ran the polling about three months ago, so we should have the results in the next couple of weeks, and that'll guide the final push towards the election.If we look at the KwaZulu-Natal polling, there's definitely a shift in the province. I think after 2024 there's more of an appetite among people to change their vote.If we draw on the historical results for this area as well, and look at the outcomes of the 2024 election, we did quite significantly better on the provincial ballot than on the national ballot. I guess that's because the DA's premier candidate was from this area.We also had the highest voter turnout in the province, at more than 70%, which we think is linked to the fact that there was a local personality associated with the 2024 campaign.So yes, the polling will be out shortly, but the provincial trends indicate a significant shift, specifically among the black electorate in KwaZulu-Natal, but also among the middle class in general.Alec Hogg: So the John Steenhuisen disclosure saga – furore, call it what you will – is unlikely to affect you in uMngeni.Chris Pappas: I'm sure it will. I don't think you can escape any sort of bad publicity. It definitely affects voter sentiment.I do think it's still a fresh issue for people and, as they always do when some sort of issue arises in the media, the party leadership will claw back the narrative to what they believe is the more correct or balanced version.I think whenever these things come out, the public – or the media – automatically jump onto the most dramatic part of the narrative. Slowly, as the party claws back the more centred or balanced narrative, voters then move back towards the DA.The other thing is that this is a local government election, and we're talking about a municipality where we're trying to protect ourselves from going backwards into the hands of the MK or the ANC.I think people can discern, or differentiate, between voting for John Steenhuisen, Geordin Hill-Lewis, or whoever it might be, and voting for the DA here locally.So yes, there's definitely damage control to be done. But I think we can reassure our residents here that they're not voting on national politics. They're voting to protect their local municipality, their local roads, their refuse collection, and so on.They'll still have time to consider their national vote if that's where they want to punish the DA – if they want to punish the DA at all.Alec Hogg: And also that our mayor, who we all love, is actually sticking around despite wanting, after 14 years, to do something different.What about 2029 now, Chris? You've made the decision. You're not going into the private sector. You're focusing your attention on uMngeni, on Howick and the surrounding area.How are you seeing things? It's still a long time away – three years in politics is a lifetime – but give us some sense of where your mind is looking.Chris Pappas: I think my mind is wanting to do something in a non-elected position in future.I think there are much better politicians out there than me. I think I'd be better suited to supporting someone who needs an implementer – a politician, an MEC, a minister, whoever it might be – someone who needs a person who is able to implement, negotiate, engage with stakeholders and enjoys that interaction while they deal with the politics.So I don't know if elected office is my long-term future, but I definitely enjoy development, or being in a position where I can implement a developmental agenda – where I can take an idea and implement it, where I can see a problem and solve it.Not just talk about it, but actually be the one with the proverbial tool belt on, fixing things.Alec Hogg: You've presumably had a taste of that already.Alec Hogg: On the developmental side, Chris, you've clearly had a taste of it in what you've been doing as the mayor of uMngeni.Chris Pappas: Yeah, look, I think what I've realised – and this is something people often ask me when they ask why I keep doing this or why I went into politics – is a story that goes back to my university days, when I realised the power of constructive politics.If you use politics – if you use elected office – to actually get things done, to fix the system, to break the system where necessary, to reimagine the system and then use it to implement things, that's incredibly powerful.I think what I've realised is that government often has a lot of excuses about why things can't be done. Yes, obviously there are budget constraints and all sorts of limitations, but I think more can be done than is being done.That's what I like about local government. You can see a problem, and you might not be able to fix it immediately, but it's close enough and small enough for you to have a vision.Not only that, it's about taking people along with you – showing them that government is not this thing that's far away. It is a partner.That's what I like: that you can really use government as a tool to develop your area.Alec Hogg: You're framing your campaign as: judge our record. Youth unemployment down, improvements in the roads budget. Are those your two big highlights? Or, when we judge your record in the mayoral position, how would you like people to look at it, and where are the challenges where perhaps you haven't achieved what you would have liked?Chris Pappas: So yeah, I mean unemployment and infrastructure are the two biggest issues that people complain about in local government generally, and in our municipality. I guess the third one – it's more general and not necessarily applicable here – is crime, you know, safer communities.So yeah, I think what we want to go back to people with is that we promised you we would make progress. We promised you that you would see a difference, and that it wouldn't just be words.It's easy to give speeches, but we said it would actually be tangible and visible. This is what we've done, and this is what we plan on doing more of.And I think, again, it goes back to some of the other questions you've asked. It's not rhetoric. These are things that we can show. I can go stand on a road that we've built, or I can go to factories that have opened and say, "Look, see, jobs have been created."Which is very different to, you know, perhaps the President's Budget Speech, where there are a lot of words, but you can't actually see how those words have been implemented.Alec Hogg: Did you ever consider perhaps standing in Pietermaritzburg instead? It's right next door. It's in a terrible state, as you mentioned earlier in our discussion. And the DA really needs somebody visible, a Zulu speaker, who has a track record. Maybe you could have won there, or was that never on the cards?Chris Pappas: I considered that, as well as eThekwini, Durban.But I think there's a difference. I don't know – I'm not a CEO. You know, as a CEO you can move from MTN to Cell C to Vodacom, and you can move cities and countries, and that's sort of okay, right? That's what happens in the private sector. You're employed in a position.But with a mayorship – and we saw it with Thoko Didiza in Tshwane in Pretoria in 2016, where she was an outsider to that community and an outsider to that political establishment – the ANC were heavily punished for that.So it's not the same. An elected representative has connections to the area, to the community and to the people, as opposed to a city manager who is there just to get a job done.So yes, I did consider it, but I think you'd be punished by people who say you're an outsider. You have no connection to this area.Yeah, so I guess that's the answer to that.Alec Hogg: We've noticed this emigration from poorly governed parts of the country to better-governed parts of the country. Are you seeing any of that happening in the Howick region?Chris Pappas: Yeah, absolutely.There are a lot of people who move up from Pietermaritzburg to the Hilton area in particular, and a lot of people who move from the inland – sort of the Battlefields area of KwaZulu-Natal, your Ladysmiths, Estcourts and those areas – to Howick and uMngeni.There are also a lot of people from Johannesburg who might find Cape Town too expensive, or the Western Cape too expensive, and are looking for an affordable lifestyle – one that also has good education, a country feel, a slower pace – and those people are moving here as well.And of course, the retirees. This is seen as a safe space. It is seen as a functional space for people who can then send their parents and grandparents here.It's not just a place, as people say, a "God's waiting place". It is actually a place where you come to have your second, better life as a senior citizen, and it's seen as safe, clean and functional.So yeah, absolutely, we've seen that.And we've seen the building plans, Alec. When we look at the building plans that are passed across the whole of KwaZulu-Natal, we passed the third-highest number of building plans of any municipality in KwaZulu-Natal.And that is despite us being the 34th biggest municipality. So out of all the municipalities, we are number 34, but we passed more building plans than Maritzburg, Newcastle, Port Shepstone, Ulundi, Ladysmith and all of those places.And that's because people are building, people are expanding and people are investing in this area. And that's mostly residential.Alec Hogg: That's an extraordinary statistic, and I guess one that we should be looking at more closely all around the country. Better governance means people have more security of tenure and they're more comfortable making the investment.But when you have a look at November the 4th and when the numbers came in, you won very, very narrowly last time around. Are you confident that you'll have at least some kind of a cushion this time?Chris Pappas: I do. I mean, I'm supposed to say that as a politician – yes, we will do better and we'll grow – but I think the numbers speak for themselves.The DA grew by 2,500 votes between 2021 and 2024. So we had 14,000-odd votes in 2021, in the local government election. Then the national election came along and we grew by 2,500 votes to 16,500 voters.And when we look at where most of those votes came from, they were new votes. They were votes in peri-urban and township areas.Collectively, across the whole municipality, those added up. So I think that goes to show that the propaganda that was put out there in 2021 is going to be a lot harder for our opponents to put out again, specifically in new voter markets.The ANC is not going to be able to go – or the MK is not going to be able to go – to voters and say the DA is going to bring back apartheid, the DA is going to take away your RDP house, the DA is going to stop your grant, and use those scare tactics, because they've had a DA government now for five years in uMngeni.And those things haven't happened. What people can see is that, for the most part, things have got better.So we're going to go out there, and as you mentioned before, our wicket is one where we say: "Look at what we've done." We promised you that we'll show you a difference. We don't have to promise you any more – we're now showing you the results. Give us an opportunity to do more.Alec Hogg: We saw a historic by-election win recently in an all-black suburb or township where the DA won that by-election. But I guess yours would have been more historic because it is very much a Zulu-speaking ward by numbers.Are you feeling as though that momentum – and talk as Chris Pappas, not as a politician here – is going to be reflected after the votes on November the 4th? And if so, how much of an upside would you expect to see from your party?Chris Pappas: Sure. So, yeah, speaking as Chris, I think yes, Alec.I don't think it's going to be record-breaking – 50%, 35%, etc. – but I do think there's been a political mind shift in South Africa.Having this coalition government at a national level has shown South Africans something different – a new political spectrum that can exist. The old narratives are not necessarily true for all political parties, not just the DA.And I do think that the DA will grow as a voter percentage. Besides the fact that we do well at local government elections because that's where we are experts, and we generally do better there, I do think there is an emerging sentiment around the power of voting, or the ability to change through votes.It's no longer allegiances along old party lines, or allegiances along racial, ethnic or religious lines.So yes, I do think the DA is going to do better. It's going to be the springboard or the platform for 2029.I think 25% to 30% is where the DA is heading in the next elections, and then from there, a springboard to 2029, where I think there really is a big opportunity for the DA to be the biggest party in South Africa – a 30% plus party.Alec Hogg: So, in your household, if we get between 25% and 30%, we'll be happy. This time round, above that, delighted and throwing a big party. Below that, not so happy, but really looking forward to 2029, where your party would be looking to be north of 30%, by your estimation.Chris Pappas: Yeah, and again, speaking as Chris, I think percentages are great, but real numbers are also important.When the elections have died down, I think we need to look at the numbers as well, and not just the percentages. Voter turnout is important for a functional democracy. Real growth, as opposed to percentage growth, is also very important.There's lots of commentary around the ANC having split up over the years and the DA not really having grown – that we've maintained the 20% to 22% and that we should have grown.But the same principle needs to be applied to the DA as has been applied to the ANC. The ANC has split four, five or six times over the last couple of years and has declined.The DA has had small breakaways, like ActionSA, etc., but has maintained the same growth and the same percentage.So we are winning new voters, we are growing, and we are a stable organisation.But I think, as Geordin has said, the question is: what is the next step? How do you push the boundary without losing your identity, without losing your core as an organisation?And I think South Africa is realising that there are not going to be 55% or 60% political parties in future. There are going to be political parties of 30%, 30% to 40%, three or four of those types of parties, and voters will coalesce around that, as opposed to these huge organisations that are a jumble of opinions, ideologies, policies and things that they're trying to achieve.So, a long answer to your short question, but I think the DA is setting itself up for a firm platform. It is all up to the decisions and strategies that are implemented going forward.Alec Hogg: Chris Pappas is the mayor and mayoral candidate for uMngeni. I'm Alec Hogg from BizNews.com.