The growing dysfunction and crumbling public infrastructure in much of Joburg’s CBD, together with the erosion of lawfulness as a civic value, demand a political response — with leadership identified as critical for a successful turnaround.
It will require a leader who can engage with the city’s cosmopolitan, megalopolitan, and multiparty political landscape. Joburg is a hub of various interests, ranging from being a strategic centre for global drug and human trafficking to hosting the continent’s most prestigious stock exchange and leading financial services companies.
The Joburg voters — among the most diverse in South Africa — have since 2016 shown they are gasping for leadership that offers guidance. They prompted, through their vote, a multiparty democratic path for a Joburg that was, and remains, not ready for a people-focused coalition government.
The Joburg transition — a 2016 abstraction of what the country would eventually face after May 2024 — laid the foundation for a proper shift from a single dominant party system to a multiparty coalition arrangement. This was a monumental shift in South African electoral politics.
The idea of recycling Helen Zille, arguably South Africa's First Lady of coalition government arrangements, is now under consideration by Johannesburg. She represents the DA’s value proposition in a landscape where competing propositions from other parties resemble (political) dung beetles. These creatures are known for rolling and burying dung for food and nesting. Apart from the faltering party brands behind them, the candidates vying for the Johannesburg mayoralty are, in many ways, no match for Zille.
And there are no emerging political leader in Joburg who can match Zille as the coming municipal elections approach. The possibility of a coalition — comprising more than 50% of the DA and the right-leaning ANC political parties — taking control of Joburg and transforming it before the 2029 political power reconfigurations is not far-fetched.
The Zille-for-Joburg strategy is about gravitas, and daring other political parties to take seriously who they nominate as their candidates. The unified character of leadership these parties must respond with will depend on their moral and ethical authenticity with South Africans. They need to seek mayoral candidates from among their members in areas they have never considered before. The selection criteria must change, the dung nest must be abandoned, and the many dung beetles should be asked to give up and step aside.
The response to the Zille onslaught will reveal how other parties select mayoral candidates. Whatever criteria they ultimately choose will shape the post-Ramaphosa leadership model that the country will have to face. The significance of her raising a hand goes beyond Joburg; it stands as a symbol in our politics that needs to be examined.
The Zille-for-Joburg idea speaks to the leadership question in South Africa. It offers an opportunity to scrutinise the electoral system and its implications beyond the elections
The question of political leadership in South Africa remains unresolved. In reality, leadership options are largely determined by political parties through mechanisms over which we have no influence. We were not legally permitted to scrutinise internal party funding, despite the establishment of a commission of enquiry to address such issues. Political personalities — good or bad — are often inseperable from the parties they represent, whose legacies voters find difficult to entirely abandon.
The Zille-for-Joburg idea speaks to the leadership question in South Africa. It offers an opportunity to scrutinise the electoral system and its implications beyond the elections. If, as some argue, individuals can stand as candidates, the law should allow them to appoint the executive outside those elected because the mandate is individual.
The May 2024 moment has made the prospect of individuals rising as strong independent candidates a reality the country should prepare to embrace. Local government elections should focus on what local leaders offer as a value proposition; it can no longer be about what a central party structure decides is best for the local community or jurisdiction.
The sovereignty of the individual voter is what is at stake. Parties should, when it comes to the 257 municipalities, be houses of branded local leaders rather than a branded house of leaders.
For the past few years, there have been inertial forces resisting the emergence within governing parties of leaders who are ethically beyond reproach. This has made political parties seem poorly equipped to be trusted with the responsibility to decide on the country’s leadership questions.
• Lucky FM Mathebula is head of faculty: people management and founder of The Thinc Foundation, a think-tank based at the DaVinci Institute.
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