SOWETAN SAYS | Fed-up Joburgers might look to Zille

The announcement by DA federal chairperson Helen Zille this week that she would be willing to stand as Joburg mayoral candidate in next year’s municipal elections is a sad indictment on the city’s current leadership.

Zille, 74, said she would make a final call by the end of this week on her candidacy, but she was adamant that she might as well do it given lobbying from people in the DA.

Her comments have sparked a fierce debate on whether she could turn around the decaying City of Joburg given her track record as mayor in Cape Town.  DA leader John Steenhuisen endorsed Zille, telling this publication that she could change the fortunes of Johannesburg should she become mayor. 

Of course, Zille is entitled to stand for any position she so wishes to contest, as this is her democratic right. But what we ought to take from her comments and the debates that have ensued is that the people of Johannesburg are crying out for political leadership in the face of failures.

Since 2019, the city has seen political instability with several changes of mayors because of party battles being fought for the control of the metro at a great expense of the citizens.

At the same time as these power struggles were being waged, the municipality was declining rapidly, with service delivery non-existent, finances in decline, roads riddled with potholes and malfunctioning traffic lights.

To this day, residents of Joburg are still paying the heavy price of the coalition governments’ instabilities that now define the face of the metro. By-laws are not enforced, streets are strewn with litter, infrastructure is being stolen in broad daylight and homeless people are running traffic lights at major intersections.

All these are the results of mismanagement, incompetence, poor governance and years of disastrous political leadership.

There was already a palpable growing sense of disillusionment among the public with the direction the city is taking ahead of next year’s local government elections, even before Zille threw her name in the hat.

That the current public debate appears to be warming up to Zille’s ambitions of wanting to lead the country’s largest metro points to citizens who are yearning for leadership. Because of the growing frustrations with failures of the past, some appear willing to hedge their bets on her.

The excitement in some quarters over Zille's availability to run as Joburg mayor next year is an indictment on all the political parties in council for failing to inspire the confidence of the citizens of the metro.