(Photo: ER Lombard) 
DA federal chair Helen Zille is seriously considering a dramatic return to frontline politics as Johannesburg mayor.
This comes after three high-profile candidates, most from business, turned down the party’s approach to throw their hats into the ring to lead the party’s Johannesburg campaign. The job was too hard-charging and the pay too low – mayors earn about R1.5-million a year. The local government election will happen in either late 2026 or early 2027.
Zille told Daily Maverick that she would decide whether to apply by next week, as candidates who want to be considered have an application deadline of 15 June.
“My whole family is in Cape Town,” she said, adding that her greatest joy now is seeing her grandchildren regularly and that they had a weekly adventure date. “My husband (retired sociologist Professor Johann Maree) has always been unbelievably supportive. He supports what I decide, but won’t come (to Johannesburg).”
She said Maree, now 82, was happily settled in their retirement village and that if she decided to run and were successful, they would remain in touch daily.
Her sons Paul and Thomas live nearby. “My family says it’s my decision.”
A close associate said Zille had been troubled by the state of Johannesburg since about 2019, when she realised that most traffic lights did not work. Since last year’s election, she has spent much time in Gauteng planning the party’s local government campaign here and had a front-row seat to what distresses the City of Gold and its six million people.
Her sister lives in Emmarentia, an old near-northern suburb often with no water or electricity due to the city’s regular outages. She said that should she run, she would live with her sister in her cottage. A mayoral candidate must be a resident of the city.
Several DA councillors plan to contest the party primary. They must submit a formal application, undergo a screening test and prepare a presentation on their plan for the city. This presentation is made to a group of 15 party leaders, five each from the Johannesburg, provincial, and federal executives. They are also asked unscripted questions. Asked if a race would be moot should she decide to run, Zille said, “ Not at all.” She said formidable candidates were running.
A senior official who spoke off the record said Johannesburg is “so far gone” that the party felt it needed a high-velocity candidate, as the DA has a strong chance of winning the city. An ANC-led coalition holds a slim majority in the city with the EFF, Patriotic Alliance and Action SA.
Johannesburg has been under soft intervention by the Presidency since March. Its collapse has become visceral with multiday power and water outages so regular they barely make the news. Thousands of traffic lights are out at any time and potholes are so large they have become dongas and memes.
Zille previously told Daily Maverick that it would take about five years to turn the city around, but she says that was an undercount.
“It will take more than five years (now) to stop the rot and turn the tide.” She noted Johannesburg had an infrastructure backlog of R200-billion and an annual budget of R86-billion. She said the city’s staff complement had grown by 86% since 2010.
Asked what Zille had going for her for the task, the official said she had turned Cape Town around as urban blight slowly settled in around 2006, when she became that city’s mayor. Recently, she headed the party’s governance unit, which worked with councillors and representatives when they entered government. Mostly, he said, whether they liked her or not, Zille enjoyed trust in her ability to govern.
This graphic shows the job description that the DA set for candidates. DM
Slice of political life (part satire)
The Zillenator – the coalition queen sets her sights on Joburg – here’s what to expect
By Marianne Thamm
(Trigger warning: dead sheep and stunned mice)
News that former Cape Town Metro executive mayor, Democratic Alliance leader and the party’s current Fedex chair since 2019, Helen Zille, is about to “throw her hat in the ring” to lead Joburg comes as no surprise.
The Afrikaans Sunday platform, Rapport, let the Zille out of the bag at the weekend, breaking the news that the veteran politician had been “approached to run”.
It was Zille in the mid-2000s who held together a fragile and fractious six-party coalition of minor parties as executive mayor of Cape Town while her government faced a hostile ANC which, in opposition, unleashed death by legal challenge.
With a background in provincial and national legislatures, Zille also came with made-in-Germany batteries that seemed to be self-charging, as she warded off each challenge, going on to win award after award.
Soon she was Queen of the Western Cape, like it or not.
Dragging and roasting
Anyone who is hoping to run against Zille, in this, the next hill in the comrades marathon that has been her political career, must arm themselves with her tactics and novel approach to bouncing back.
(Photo: ER Lombard)
This includes the recent Showmax special, Calamitous Caucus of Clowns – The Roast of Helen Zille, during which everyone on stage appeared to be straightjacketed by a script which sucked all spontaneity out of the room. But worth a watch, anyhow.
(Photo: ER Lombard)
Earlier in the year, Zille made an appearance as Zille Von Teez in full drag on the Tollie en Manila Show, also on Showmax. Zille might and could very well just stay in drag and go out and campaign… she’s that good, say those in the know.
Zille on the campaign trail, even in her sixties and now at 74, knows exactly what works for which constituency, including which soundtrack to play while choreographing her own dance moves. Zille can probably do a Zulu warrior kick while posting on social media and reach higher than PJ Powers.
The three previous occasions that Zille offered to “throw her hat in the ring”, she won.
First to lead the Cape Metro (2006-2009) as executive mayor, then the DA itself (2007-2015) while simultaneously being elected as premier of the Western Cape (2009-2019). This is an indication of Zille’s unwaning political stamina and clout, whatever your views of her ways und means.
They’re eating the sheep
In 2016, Zille published her autobiography, Not Without A Fight (say it out loud in your head in her voice), weighing in at a hefty 700 or so pages.
There she documents her impressive, life-long activism in townships in and around Cape Town, where she has survived being shot at, shouted at, being arrested… the usual. Seen it all.
At about this time, Zille writes: “I should stress that my constituency work involved much more than regular visits to police stations and courts (and dodging the occasional bullet)”.
She recalls that “I was also called on to provide ambulance services from time to time, sometimes in the dead of night. At times, I transported some interesting passengers…
“Every time we had a branch launch, we would buy a live sheep, which I would fetch in my car.
“The animal would sit meekly in the back, looking out of the window as if it was enjoying the view. It gave me an insight into the English idiom that compares a calm, unwitting walk into disaster with ‘a lamb being led to the slaughter’.”
Zille says that during the drive, she would bond with each sheep and “felt deeply guilty every time I dropped it off at the party venue”.
Say what? You didn’t stay for the tjoppies?
The mouse and other tails
For some time now, I have been wandering on and off stages across the country, in restaurants, bars and festivals with a piece of “performance journalism” titled, Round of Applause – South Africa Still Standing.
I have turned into a bit of roving, three-dimensional, human newspaper, a town crier of sorts, celebrating SA’s victory over State Capture and the role of the media, judiciary, whistle-blowers and others while catching up with the latest news.
Zille has, since 2023, when I first followed this calling, grown into a fulcrum around which some of the funniest moments of the show revolve.
One of the other centrepieces (and this is a retelling audiences have demanded not be shelved, as of yet) is an incident with a mouse that I witnessed with my own Putin-blue eyes while Zille was touring Julius Malema’s hood, Seshego, in Limpopo in 2011.
I will not let the mouse out of the bellbottom here (so to speak), but let’s just say the incident is indicative of the stamina and discipline of Helen Zille when she is on a mission.
The Government of National Unity was pulled together during a 10-minute comfort break, requested by Floyd Shivambu (still then dressed in red) while new MPs were being sworn in after the 2024 elections, enabling Zille and the ANC (and others) to sign a Memorandum of Agreement that had been left hanging.
And voila, we have our Republiek van Alle Kante with Baie Kante in Die Parliament. Since the rugby incident, I take it no translation is required.
Of the future political horizon in Joburg, where Zille has set her sights, all we can say is beware of the politician in drag who comes bearing sheep. DM