Joburg’s water crisis could smooth the DA’s path to mayoral victory

The handling of the latest water crisis in Joburg by ANC deployees has been so disastrous that it seems certain to hurt the party in the local elections. The DA, and particularly Helen Zille, will make the most of it.

Even before Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi decided to tell voters that when there was no water at his home he went to a hotel, the water crisis has been a literal disaster for the ANC.

At every level its members gave the impression that they did not know what they were doing.

Joburg mayor Dada Morero has been making promises about water for several weeks, which have not been kept.

Towards the end of last week, images from press conferences showed him sitting right at the edge of the table, almost looking like he had no role to play.

At provincial level, Lesufi’s contribution was to provide the quote of the week.

And at national level, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s instruction that Water and Sanitation Minister Pemmy Majodina personally attend to the crisis may just have landed her in a difficult situation.

Since her appointment in 2024 she has demonstrated very little public interest in water issues. Rather, she has left them to her deputy, David Mahlobo.

Mahlobo has qualifications in water engineering, and it shows. He’s also happy to go to every public event, speak to residents and take questions from the media. But he completely lacks legitimacy because of the testimony at the Zondo Commission showing he walked out of the State Security Agency headquarters with cash in black rubbish bags.

The only person to speak publicly on the issue from the government with any gravitas was, ironically, the leader of another party. As Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Velenkosini Hlabisa (who is leader of the IFP) explained, Thursday morning was not necessarily the right time to declare a national disaster over Joburg’s problems.

All of this gives the impression that people like Lesufi, Morero and Majodina are in office, but not in power.

They simply cannot enforce their will on the situation.

One of the great mistakes this administration has made was to repeatedly give deadlines by which water would flow. When those deadlines were not met, residents’ anger understandably boiled over.

Of course, the DA has been making hay.

The image of its mayoral candidate, Zille, sitting on the edge of a pothole, sun umbrella in hand, with her legs in water was the kind of image that can win an election.

So many of Joburg’s problems were summed up in an image anyone who saw it could understand in an instant.

Zille’s team had been ready for this moment.

When she was selected as the DA’s Johannesburg mayoral candidate she correctly identified water as the main issue of the election.

As someone who watches current events incredibly closely, she might well have known that the water issues were only going to get worse, and that the current administration was not going to be able to resolve them.

Unfortunately for the Joburg ANC, it is not just fighting the results of its own ineptitude and a strong competitor. It is also battling the criminality that appears to reside within it.

News24 has reported that the CEO of the Johannesburg Development Agency, who was arrested with a large amount of cash, may be linked to a case that involved what is reported to be two members of the mayoral committee.

While no arrests have been made, and it is possible the two come from other members of the coalition since there are more ANC members on the committee than from any other party, it seems likely that they are from that party.

Meanwhile, Morero has been challenging the results of the Joburg regional ANC’s elections, in which he lost to Loyiso Masuku.

All of this gives the impression that the Joburg ANC is trying to rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic, while the entire vessel of Joburg has no water on which to float.

This has also created one of the major problems for both the administration and the regional ANC.

This is a moment, a crisis, that requires strong leadership. It is often better and easier to do this around one particular person.

As countless leaders in a crisis have found, it can be a huge opportunity to show that you can lead.

During the pandemic President Cyril Ramaphosa did this through family meetings.

In the state of New York, the governor at the time Andrew Cuomo gave daily briefings at the start of the outbreak. It centred communication around him. It also removed attention from his political rival, President Donald Trump.

If Cuomo had not been found to have sexually harassed staff members that might have been the base for a presidential run.

The ANC in Joburg has shown itself unable to do the same thing.

This might be partly because it is not in the nature of Morero’s personality to do this (people who can do this are relatively rare, which is why they stand out).

But it is also because of the internal politics of the ANC. He has no political base and he knows it.

Masuku has not yet shown a public appetite to lead this communication, leaving the stage open for other people.

It is a situation almost tailor-made for a person of Zille’s experience and personality.

While much will be made of Ramaphosa’s promise of a new national water intervention team during his State of the Nation Address last week, it is not certain that this will change anything.

As Rise Mzansi pointed out last week, despite forming the Presidential Johannesburg Working Group 11 months ago, he has not attended one of their meetings.

So many of the problems with water are about local government, and what are now being termed the “extractive patterns” that have come to dominate Joburg. Which means that resolving them will require action at that level.

There is still much to come in the race for Joburg.

One of the biggest variables is still the uMkhonto Wesizwe party, since it not certain whether that party has peaked or will fall back (for the moment it has no obviously visible mayoral candidate).

ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba appears to be flirting with running for mayor again. He is unlikely to win, meaning he will face questions about whether he would really represent his party in council if he were not the mayor (he ran for mayor in 2021 and then resigned as a councillor, and has also refused to enter Parliament to represent his party there).

And it is still possible that Zille or the DA could commit some kind of electoral mistake (although it is unlikely that they will refer to hotel rooms in a crisis).

But for the moment, water is the DA’s clear and obvious route to dominating the next Joburg administration. DM