The worst-kept secret in South African politics — Helen Zille’s candidacy for mayor of Joburg — was confirmed on Saturday September 20.
Media coverage and public discourse exploded, of course, and standing out so far was her interview with 5FM morning drive-time host Anele Mdoda.
It was a crystallising interview, particularly about how terminal South Africa’s political decline is. I shall return to the interview later, but before that it is necessary to examine some basic facts.
Zille was born on March 9 1951, which makes her 74 years old. She will be 75 going on 76 when the local government elections take place next year, making her possibly the oldest election-time mayoral candidate in South African history. She will also be a few months younger than Nelson Mandela was when he was the ANC’s presidential candidate in 1994 (he was 76).
Joburg is the commercial capital of the African continent. It is a magnet to some of the best talent the country has to offer, in all fields of South African life. It even attracts people from all over the world, so it is not bereft of capability. It is incredibly impoverished, however, in the willingness of many of its residents to change the circumstances of their own city.
Even the DA, which Zille has dominated for nearly two decades, could not find a candidate for the job. And therefore, so far, the only known candidate for executive mayor of the City of Johannesburg is an old white woman from Cape Town who, at the best of times, is divisive. She has over the years assimilated much of the US alt-right political message of “anti-wokism”, the cousin of latter-day praise singers of the goodness of colonialism.
And this was the issue quietly sewn into her chaotic interview with Mdoda this week. It is Zille’s loud and insistent denial of the historical and continuing experience of black people in South Africa. The structural racism, and an inequality deepened over the years by the ANC’s refusal to govern in the interest of all South Africans.
And in this moment South Africa needs unifying leaders with a willingness to speak words and propose actions that will heal through active policy interventions the structural fissures that keep black people poor.
The people Zille has insisted on calling “refugees” in the past are a combination of the global phenomenon of urbanisation on the one hand, and the lopsided, racialised development patterns of the last 130 years on the other. The people who trek to Cape Town are no different to the people that have, for the past century, had no choice but to trek to Joburg, leaving broken, vulnerable communities and families behind.
In any event, when she used the word refugee pejoratively, she really meant poor black people, not the professionals who have done pretty much the same to secure well-paying jobs in Cape Town instead of Qumbu, Ngqushwa or Debe, where they were born. The latter version fit the mould of those the DA has, correctly, recruited into its ranks.
Political change has historically been driven by professionals — members of the much-derided 'bourgeois class'. Zille’s candidacy demonstrates clearly how, in the case of Joburg as an exemplar of the entire country, this idea has collapsed
And while Zille is the hook of this piece, the point is about South Africa’s deepening malaise.
First, there is the total capitulation of the black professional from the arena of political power contestation for the purpose of uniting, modernising and transforming the country from a creation of colonial and apartheid history into a demonstration of an African democracy delivering material dividends.
There is an unspoken belief that being educated, eloquent and unconnected to the 100-year-old, tired ideas of what constitutes progressivism and “Left” politics is a delegitimising trait rather than a strength.
Yet Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo were attorneys, and so was Bram Fischer. Walter Sisulu had his own real estate firm. Sol T Plaatje was a journalist and linguist. Charlotte Maxeke had a BSc from Wilberforce University, Wisconsin. Steve Biko was a medical student. I can write a list as long as my arm. The point is that political change has historically been driven by professionals — members of the much-derided “bourgeois class”.
Zille’s candidacy demonstrates clearly how, in the case of Joburg as an exemplar of the entire country, this idea has collapsed.
Second, Joburg needs something different. It needs a leader who will understand land justice as not just a historical grievance or playing to white fears, but increasingly about spatial planning and justice in the face of rapid and unplanned urbanisation.
It needs a leader who, instead of swearing at business and the nonexistent so-called investment strike, will recognise that the city is the centre of capital, trapped with nowhere to go because over the years it has been run by people with no conception of how the real economy works.
In the final analysis, Zille is not the problem. What is missing is bravery and imagination, a willingness to fight for a future we want to live in. The opportunity is not lost, but time is running out.
• Zibi is national leader of the Rise Mzansi political party
For opinion and analysis consideration, e-mail Opinions@timeslive.co.za
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