Helen Zille’s return to the spotlight is terrifying the ANC in Gauteng, as the city crumbles and residents lose hope, writes Zukile Majova in Real Politics.
Johannesburg is falling apart — and the African National Congress has no one left who can save it.
The once-great city is on its knees. Streets are crumbling, crime is out of control and the central business district is turning into a ghetto. There is rubbish on the pavements, buildings without water, and whole neighbourhoods left in the dark for days at a time.
The city’s budget is over R85-billion, but no one can say where the money goes.
Mayor Dada Morero and Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi are in charge. But under them, Johannesburg has become a disaster zone. The mayor keeps taking out massive foreign loans, but nothing improves. Traffic lights are fixed here and there, lanes are painted — but the city is still a mess.
President Cyril Ramaphosa stepped in with a R50-billion lifeline for Johannesburg and Gauteng, but the backlog remains. The city is still without a city manager, and its infrastructure is collapsing.
To fix Johannesburg properly, it will take at least 10 years and someone serious. There’s a R200-billion backlog just to fix roads, pipes and electricity lines. That person is not Morero — and definitely not Lesufi.
So when Helen Zille appeared on Power FM this week, it was no surprise that ANC members across the province started panicking.
Zille, the former mayor of Cape Town, is being whispered about as the DA’s candidate for the next Johannesburg elections in 2026. It’s not just DA members getting excited — ordinary residents and business owners across Johannesburg are now saying: “Let’s give her a chance.”
It’s no longer a party issue. It’s a survival issue. And Zille is a fighter with a track record.
She built Cape Town into a working city. She cut corruption. She made it easier to start a business and made the city safer. She won over black middle class voters and students. That’s because she proved a South African city can be clean, fair and functional.
She’s not just a symbol — she’s a worker.
Now she’s submitted her name to the DA to stand as mayor. It’s likely too late to stop her. Whether the DA’s leadership wants her or not, voters are demanding her name on the ballot.
Zille will still need to go through the DA’s full vetting process — interviews, written tests and party hearings. But unless something dramatic happens, she’s expected to walk through.
Her pitch is simple: she’s here to clean up. She wants to fix service delivery, restore public trust, and balance the books.
And that’s the real problem for the ANC. Not Zille. Trust.
Johannesburg’s residents don’t trust the city anymore. They pay for water and electricity and sometimes get neither. There’s no one to complain to. There’s no one to fix it. It’s every person for themselves.
So can Zille actually win?
Yes. She already has momentum. The DA has governed Johannesburg before. Herman Mashaba ran the city from 2016 to 2019. Dr Mpho Phalatse was mayor from 2021 to 2023. Now Zille brings experience and serious political skill — especially in handling coalitions.
Coalitions are the new reality. No party is likely to win Johannesburg outright. That’s why it helps that Zille has experience managing coalition governments and keeping them stable.
Even before Zille threw her hat in the ring, the ANC was losing badly in Johannesburg.
In the last elections, 64% of the vote went to opposition parties. The ANC was left with just 36%.
Now the DA wants more than just the city. It’s eyeing the whole province.
If it can run Johannesburg well, the DA believes it can win over Gauteng in 2029. That’s the big plan.
It’s not impossible. If the DA controls coalitions in Tshwane and Ekurhuleni and adds Johannesburg to the mix, it could flip Gauteng. And Gauteng is the country’s biggest province by population size, full of voters who are tired of waiting for change.
Recent polling shows the ANC is already behind. The latest DA poll findings show that the DA is sitting on 30.3%, just ahead of the ANC on 29.7%. That’s enough to change the national game, especially in future coalitions.
If that happens, the DA may be the one calling the shots in a future coalition government — not the ANC.
The party has also won some support for its campaign against the ANC’s plan to raise Value-Added Tax. People are struggling, and the DA is presenting itself as fighting for more than privileged whites.
Even more importantly, the DA’s support among black voters is growing. More and more voters are switching from race-based loyalty to results-based voting. They want electricity, water and jobs — and they don’t care which party delivers it, as long as someone does.
That’s the nightmare facing the ANC in Gauteng.
And Helen Zille — or “Godzilla” as her opponents mockingly call her — may just be the monster they can’t stop.
Pictured above: Helen Zille at Power FM.
Image source: Helen Zille
