- The ANC’s failures in service delivery and corruption have created an opening for the DA to attract black voters in Johannesburg.
- Helen Zille’s mayoral ambitions face resistance from parties that remain deeply uncomfortable with her political record and views on race.
- A potential ANC-DA coalition could emerge from their shared economic interests, despite their public political differences.
Pundits say the DA’s Helen Zille is poised to win the most votes in Johannesburg. Today, residents of Soweto, Alexandra, or Orange Farm face a brutal, cynical choice: accept a government seen as racist that picks up your rubbish, fixes your streetlights, and keeps the water running, or a corrupt government that looks like you but has consumed everything, even the cheese.
Many may choose the so-called racist government. Admitting this is painful and shameful. But it is the reality the ANC has created. Many believe the only way for South Africa to succeed is for black and white citizens to work towards a shared vision: building a state that delivers services to its people. Deng Xiaoping said it best: it does not matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.
In South Africa, we have adapted this. The colour of the cat, black or white, no longer matters, as long as it protects the cheese and catches the mice. To many, the ANC has moved the cheese, hidden the cheese, and then eaten the cheese. Worse still, it has let the mice run amok.
As a result, it has become easier for dominant white parties, including the Freedom Front Plus, to encroach into black areas and win over black voters. Not because black voters have changed, but because the ANC has abandoned the space of service delivery. When your substation explodes, City Power says there are no cables, and a DA ward councillor from Randburg arrives with a contractor; ideology takes a back seat.
Making matters worse, the ANC is now seen as a protector of white economic interests. After all, where does the ANC get its funding? From the same white monopoly capital as Zille. From the same donors in Sandton who hedge their bets. Both parties attend the same fundraisers. Both promise stability for capital.
So the voter asks: if both protect white capital, why not vote for the one that at least fixes potholes, running taps, and electricity? This is the environment Helen Zille is navigating as she runs for mayor of Johannesburg. Let’s take a critical look at Zille’s candidacy.
The Zille myth: Too rich to steal
The most dangerous myth in this election is that Zille has enough and has no reason to steal or be corrupt. This is false, and Jozi voters must be warned. Helen Zille is not corrupt in the way ANC deployees are, for example, taking R5,000 to reconnect electricity. Her corruption is not petty; it is ideological and structural.
She does not need to steal money because she has enough. Instead, she steals narrative and power. She will privatise everything that moves, such as Jozi water, Jozi waste management, and City Power’s maintenance, and call it efficiency. That efficiency will enrich the same white firms that fund her. That is corruption by another name: the legalised corruption of tenderpreneurship painted blue.
She claims she will not work with corrupt parties and has made it clear she is reluctant to join any such coalitions. That sounds principled. Most people feel betrayed by the ANC and can relate; we are all tired of coalitions with people who steal.
But who defines corruption? For Zille, it is always the black party: EFF, MKP, ActionSA, ANC. Corruption is never the DA’s own legacy in Cape Town, where tenders for housing went to friends, where police stopped black people in beach suburbs, and where her own tweets about colonialism destabilised a city.
The numbers: The ANC’s nightmare
Let’s look at the numbers she is counting on. Johannesburg is now presumed to belong to the DA at 33 percent. In a city of broken coalitions, 33 percent makes you the largest. Zille is aiming for 40 percent. With 40 percent, she becomes untouchable. She can become mayor with only one small partner.
For the ANC, polling at 22 percent in Johannesburg must be a nightmare. Once the kingpin of Gauteng, the movement that turned Ellis Park into a sea of black, green, and gold in 1994, it is now fighting to stay above 20 percent. How did it fall? Three words: corruption, electricity, internal rivalry.
In Soweto, you will find three ANC branches on one street, each not speaking to the others. They fight over councillor lists while the DA goes door to door with a clipboard asking: Is your water running?
Then there are MKP, EFF, and ActionSA, all hovering at around 10 percent each. The EFF is stagnant; it is no longer a movement, but a seat-negotiating machine. It wants one MMC position (preferably Finance) and a car. It is not interested in governing Johannesburg, only in leverage.
So you have a hung council and a scramble for partnerships. There is talk of a blacks-only coalition: ANC, EFF, MKP, ActionSA, PA. This coalition of the melanin totals 58 percent. On paper, it beats Zille.
But can it hold? Can Gayton McKenzie sit with Floyd Shivambu, who calls him a coloured stooge? Can Panyaza Lesufi’s ANC align with the MKP, which calls Cyril Ramaphosa a traitor? That coalition will last only until the first mayoral chain is handed over. Then it will collapse over positions.
Zille’s unavoidable struggle
But Zille will inevitably struggle to get black partners because they view her through lenses that are not only old but also current. Black parties remember her 2017 tweet: “For those claiming the legacy of colonialism was ONLY negative, think of our independent judiciary, transport infrastructure, piped water…” In a city where piped water does not exist in informal settlements, that tweet is not academic. It is an insult.
They remember how she ran the Western Cape as a fiefdom where black people were tolerated, not embraced. They remember she called people from the Eastern Cape who flooded Cape Town “refugees.” They remember that even the DA’s own black leaders, Mmusi Maimane, Herman Mashaba, and Lindiwe Mazibuko, left because they could not breathe around her.
So who will partner with her? ActionSA, perhaps, because Herman and Helen are frenemies. But even Herman knows Zille will humiliate him. The Freedom Front Plus will join, but that only confirms the narrative: DA plus FF Plus is a white coalition to retake Johannesburg, the richest city in Africa.
The final consolidation no one wants to admit
And so we come to the question no one wants to ask openly: Could we see a consolidation of an ANC and DA coalition because, essentially, they have more that binds them than separates them, except for corruption? Yes.
Think about it. What binds the ANC and DA? Both believe in the Constitution as it is. Both support the protection of white economic interests while black economic interests are managed through BEE tenders. Both receive money from the same white monopoly capital.
Both believe in market-led service delivery. Both fear the EFF and MKP more than they fear each other. What separates them? Corruption. ANC corruption is embarrassing, chaotic, and visible. DA corruption is hidden, legal, and called outsourcing.
In Johannesburg, where neither can reach 50 percent, the most stable government is not DA plus EFF (that is chaos), nor ANC plus MKP (that is revenge). It is DA plus ANC, a grand coalition. The national GNU brought down to the local level.
Zille would rather die than admit it, and Panyaza would rather resign than admit it. But that is where Johannesburg is heading. And that is why, even if people choose the so-called racist government over the corrupt one (because at least the former will pick up the dirt), they must still think deeply and hard about Zille’s candidacy.
Because she is not coming to fix Johannesburg for you. She is coming to fix Johannesburg for the narrative that a white woman can run a black city better than black people, that Johannesburg needed a madam to come back and restore order.
And Johannesburg, with all its faults, does not need a madam. It needs a manager, someone who sees black people not as voters to be saved from the ANC, but as citizens to be served.
If Zille wants 40 percent, she must prove she is not the cat that protects the cheese for the white house while letting the black house starve.
Right now, she hasn’t.
Get your news on the go. Click here to follow the Conviction WhatsApp channel.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Conviction.co.za
