‘From Dada to Gogo’ – DA announces Helen Zille as party's candidate for Joburg mayor

[video width="832" height="464" mp4="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/VIDEO-2025-09-20-09-56-16.mp4"][/video]

At 74 years old, the former mayor, premier and journalist Helen Zille on Saturday, 20 September, launched her campaign to become mayor of Johannesburg as the Democratic Alliance (DA) unveiled its winning candidate.

An MC at the DA’s razzmatazz Soweto launch said the city would go from “Dada to Gogo”, a reference to the city’s mayor, the ANC’s Dada Morero, who is struggling to manage a series of crises over water and electricity supply, and general infrastructure disrepair.

Zille is a doting granny now and has told Daily Maverick that she had to carefully weigh up losing out on weekly dates with her grandchildren to make the trek north. A mayor must be resident in the city and she will run the campaign from Joburg, the city to which she has now moved.

At a function at the Eyethu Centre and a few minutes’ drive from where the 1976 Soweto Uprising began, and where Nelson and Winnie Mandela lived, the DA said its polling showed that the political party had more support than the ANC in Johannesburg, Tshwane and all of Gauteng.

“Johannesburg can’t continue like it’s a war zone. You can’t have streets that look like a donkey town somewhere,” said the party’s Gauteng leader, Solly Msimanga, who revealed its support levels. The party conducts polls regularly and uses the outcome as a strategy to fight elections.

‘Daughter of Johannesburg’

Zille, a Cape Town fixture for decades and a former World Mayor of the Year for her turnaround in the port city, was in fact born in Hillbrow and lived in the inner-city suburbs of Berea and Orange Grove.

She worked at the Rand Daily Mail as a political journalist, and revealed the story of Steve Biko’s torture and death in detention.

At the made-for-TV announcement, Zille said: “Many of you know me as an ex-mayor and an ex-premier, a mother and a gogo. I am here today as a daughter of Johannesburg, where I took my first breath, took my first steps and took my first words. It’s here where I rented my first flat and found my first job. I fell in love here. And I fell in love with this city and all her people.

“It was the place to be – now just over 30 years later, many see it as a place to flee. It is South Africa’s most devastating example of what bad government can do to good people,” said Zille, who donned a crème mayoral business suit rather than party regalia for the occasion.

Gone was the conservative, anti-woke persona of Zille’s most recent political persuasion. Instead, she continually projected herself as a “daughter of Johannesburg”.

The ceremony was attended by a largely black audience with party activists and city councillors. Kwaito and amapiano, as well as Brenda Fassie party-starters, blasted to give a flavour of a local government campaign that kicked off this week with an ANC councillor roll call on Monday and the Zille announcement on Saturday.

Read more: ‘Without you doing anything, we are dead,’ Ramaphosa tells local ANC councillors

Ramaphosa gifts the DA’s campaign

At the roll call, President Cyril Ramaphosa told party councillors: “Those municipalities that do best are not ANC-controlled municipalities … they are often DA-controlled municipalities.” He added: “We want to go and see what Cape Town is doing.”

This has gone down like a ton of bricks with the ANC party faithful and has gifted the DA a campaign line of note. Narrating how DA-run councils get better audit outcomes than most, party leader John Steenhuisen said: “You can read the Auditor-General’s reports, or read Ratings Afrika [a municipal ratings agency], or if you don’t have time for that, just listen to the president.”

Zille went even further: “President Ramaphosa this week showed the boldness we have been waiting for by endorsing his main political opponent. He told South Africa what we know [about DA-run councils].”

Zille beat at least two candidates who had thrown their hats in the ring to be candidates. Both are well regarded: DA Johannesburg caucus leader Belinda Echeozonjoku and its Gauteng shadow transport MMC, Tyrell Meyers. 

Iron Lady tactics won’t work

While a few DA supporters present shouted out “The Iron Lady” as her candidacy was announced, Zille appears to be choosing a different campaign. Johannesburg’s take-no-prisoner people are unlikely to be won over by a Margaret Thatcher (the hard-line British prime minister who broke the unions) approach, especially in a black-majority city and province where Western white matriarch politics won’t wash.  

“The most wonderful thing about Joburg is the resilience of her people. Thousands of people working in hundreds of organisations want to make Jozi the great city she can be. When enough people do that together [you can create] a great world city.

“Great cities make great countries, not the other way around. All they need is a mayor and municipal council that gets behind them. With a whole of society groundswell, you can turn that belief into a reality,” said Zille, giving a flavour of the campaign she will run. 

She has spoken about the dilemma of leaving her beloved husband Professor Johann Maree in Cape Town. He doesn’t want to move, but she told Daily Maverick they will speak each day while her sons will look out for their dad, now 82 years old.   

Zille has previously told Daily Maverick that she thinks it will take longer than five years to stabilise Johannesburg, given the advanced state of disrepair, and has said no party is likely to win a majority in the local government election planned for between 2 November 2026 and 1 February 2027.

Johannesburg is currently facing a water crisis so severe in several parts of the city that Parliament has instructed Morero to come back with a plan to get the taps going in three weeks after he was summoned to the House with Rand Water and the Department of Water and Sanitation on Friday, 19 September.

The city has reportedly “swept” R4-billion meant for water repairs and infrastructure investments into a central city account to pay for current expenditure as it is in a severe cash crunch.

Read more: ‘Scarily predictable’ — Joburg water crisis reaches boiling point as tyres burn and rubber bullets fly

Opponents

Zille will face off against Kenny Kunene of the Patriotic Alliance, who has been named as its candidate. The ANC and other smaller parties that run the governing coalition in Joburg have not named candidates.

Morero is in a different race with his party deputy Loyiso Masuku, who wants his job. The party has been unable to hold a regional conference because of administrative problems to elect a leader. DM