The battle for Joburg: ANC weighs Chikane, Makhura and Masuku to take on Zille

The race for Joburg: Could it end up being Helen Zille vs Frank Chikane? The veteran man of the cloth, anti-apartheid revolutionary and the chair of the ANC’s Integrity Commission is leading the African National Congress’s (ANC) primary slate of mayoral candidates for the City.

Deep reporting by the Daily Maverick shows that the party’s top three candidates are Chikane; the former Gauteng premier, David Makhura; and the ANC’s regional secretary and Johannesburg deputy mayor, Loyiso Masuku.

Chikane has been endorsed by the party’s powerful Veterans League, its body of elders in Gauteng. Makhura is being lobbied to stand. He is regarded as a safe pair of hands and holds top jobs in the ANC: he is its head of political education, the convenor of how the party thinks about coalition government, and also the lead at its OR Tambo School of Leadership. The telegenic Masuku is the party’s Johannesburg regional secretary and the deputy mayor.

“[Chikane] is a big name and can turn things around. Loyiso [Masuku] is a lightweight compared to [Helen] Zille [currently the lead candidate]. He is on the ANC local government task team,” said a veteran supporting Chikane, who did not want to be quoted.

He said that if the ANC agreed on Chikane, he would have to become a councillor before the elections.

Chikane did not respond to a request for comment, and the ANC said that it will only reveal its candidate later in June.

Masuku has the ANC region’s support, but she is associated with a local failed state in Johannesburg and is the political head of finance. Johannesburg’s latest R89-billion budget passed in May is regarded as unfunded, although it has been greenlighted by the National Treasury, subject to steep cost cuts, high tariff increases and significant revenue collection promises.

Masuku has support in ANC headquarters because the party has committed itself to the so-called zebra principle of gendered representation: one man, one woman across all levels of its party lists.

Three of the ANC regional office-bearers occupy powerful patronage positions on City entities – they chair the boards of the Johannesburg Property Company, the Johannesburg Development Agency and Pikitup. These are where rents are extracted. The region needs to maintain the status quo to protect its patronage privilege and would likely buck against an imposed candidate such as Chikane or Makhura.

Makhura has support from the party’s renewal faction led by President Cyril Ramaphosa. He would, however, struggle with both the party’s powerful provincial and regional barons, say insiders. The Gauteng ANC is under administration because of factionalism and its steep election loss in 2024 – the party went down to 34.76% from 50.19% in 2019.

Gauteng used to be an ANC stronghold and is the urban home of Nelson Mandela from where he launched one of the biggest campaigns against apartheid colonialism. The Gauteng ANC is also now a limping stronghold of Deputy President Paul Mashatile, who will play a big role in the choice of the ANC’s Joburg mayoral candidate. He is said to back Masuku, as does provincial executive member Lebogang Maile, who is a big power-broker.

“You can’t have someone who is a mayor who doesn’t command authority in the [national ANC],” said a second veteran who knows Johannesburg well, adding, “they [the regional and provincial factions of the ANC] will run rings around Frank [Chikane]. You need someone who can tell them, ‘You can eat, but you can’t eat so much’. [The candidate will have] constrained authority.”

Eating is the colloquialism for patronage and corruption from provincial and city coffers.

A third former member of the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto weSizwe, said he thought the party had left its decision on a mayoral candidate way too late and that the die was cast.

The first veteran the Daily Maverick canvassed said: “For Joburg, we need a big name who can take on the REC [the regional executive committee] and clean the ANC.”

News24’s Carol Paton and Bongekile Macupe first reported that the ANC had approached big names because the Joburg position is strategic in the election, which the party sees as both a contest for power and the re-establishment of its credibility.

The names included party supporters or members who have proven their mettle in business. Absa CEO Kenny Fihla has just started his new job and appears to be savouring it, so he has declined. Fihla, with Ketso Gordhan and Roland Hunter, were the dream team the ANC appointed in 1999 to reimagine Johannesburg. He was the head of its transformation lekgotla. The three were very successful for several years.

Jabu Moleketi is a former deputy finance minister and a leading business executive – he co-owns Harith General Partners and the Lebashe Investment Group.

Tokyo Sexwale is a businessman and was the roaringly popular Gauteng premier early in the freedom years. Chichi Maponya is a business magnate and the daughter of Richard Maponya – the Maponyas are Soweto gold. The ANC has lost support in its Soweto heartland because of poor service delivery. The party also sounded out Mbhazima Shilowa, a popular former Gauteng premier, who declined.

The Mail & Guardian report has added Nhlanhla Lux to the list. The former Operation Dudula leader redeemed his reputation somewhat when he protected Maponya Mall during the July 2021 attempted insurrection and riots. He is an unlikely candidate.

ANC centralises choice of mayors

The ANC regards the choice of mayors of the eight metros as strategic, especially the three cities in Gauteng where one in four people lives.

The party’s top seven leaders will choose the mayoral candidates on recommendations from its electoral committee led by former president Kgalema Motlanthe.

All candidates are being vetted with a reveal planned by the end of June, the party said in a briefing. The party is threatened with a further decline in the polls because local government is closest and most meaningful to people’s experience of the state.

Read more

ANC on the hunt for talented city mayors — inside and outside the party

April 20, 2026

In most places it still governs, ANC municipalities are falling apart. There are 66 hung councils in South Africa and the 4 November election is likely to deliver many more.

For the first time, the ANC opened a portal where individuals could submit their expression of interest in becoming a mayor. This will allow the party to recruit from outside, changing a long-standing tradition of deploying only its own cadres into positions.

Its list of characteristics includes that candidates be “capable, ethical, disciplined and accountable” while any metro mayor candidates will have to sign mayoral delivery agreements with the party. “Deployment is not an entitlement,” the ANC said in its electoral guidelines.

When she launched her mayoral campaign nine months ago, Zille told the Daily Maverick that the Democratic Alliance (DA) wants to be the largest party. At the time, she did not think the DA could win an overall majority, but that may have changed, her campaigners said this week. The ANC, for its part, knows that it is do or die in the city. DM