Helen Zille: The 75-year-old white grandmother taking on the ANC in Johannesburg

Helen Zille, the 75-year-old white politician nicknamed ‘gogo’, meaning grandmother, is running for mayor of Johannesburg.

She is involved in a high-stakes November 2026 election race that analysts say could reshape South Africa’s politics.

Zille, the former mayor of Cape Town and head of the Western Cape province, has campaigned to fix Johannesburg.

As part of her campaign, he is using viral videos showing her swimming in potholes and paddling down flooded streets.

Her run has put pressure on the African National Congress (ANC), which currently leads a coalition in the city, and has excited some residents fed up with years of dysfunction.

The race will test whether frustration over poor service delivery can outweigh loyalty to the ANC, still revered by many as the party that ended apartheid.

A Zille victory would give her pro-business Democratic Alliance (DA) control of South Africa’s economic hub and could shift the political landscape ahead of national elections in 2029.

Despite being Africa’s richest city, Johannesburg faces chronic power cuts and water shortages.

Downtown buildings are often taken over by gangs, which charge people for staying in them. The city has had seven mayors in the last five years.  

Poor services test voters’ loyalty

Car repair shop owner Rashied Najam was won over by the DA after Zille visited his shop and listened to his problems.

Officials had neglected repeated pleas to fix a leaking sewage plant nearby, he said.

“Here comes a lady that’s my total opposition, Helen Zille, and she meets me, and she shakes my hand and hugs me,” said Najam.

This is the first time he is planning not to support the ANC, the party of liberation hero Nelson Mandela. “I love them. But they’re disappointing,” he said.

The ANC’s Johannesburg regional chairperson, Loyiso Masuku, is one of its potential mayoral candidates.

Masuku acknowledged problems with service delivery and blamed it on the city’s rapid growth.

“We’re going to be proactive in terms of how we deal with our infrastructure challenges,” she said, adding that residents like Najam “do deserve better services”.

Beyond potholes, a racial test 

Zille said Johannesburg would be much tougher to govern than Cape Town, considering its significant challenges.

“Just getting functional budgeting and allocation working, getting rid of corruption, and focusing on the basics is going to be the big challenge of Joburg,” Zille said.

The race also taps into South Africa’s deep-seated racial divisions, testing whether voters in the mostly Black city are willing to cross those lines.

The DA is often accused by critics of defending white minority interests, which it denies.

Despite frustrations with its governance, many South Africans “equate the ANC with their Black identity,” said political analyst William Gumede.

“We don’t yet have enough people who have moved from a voting point of view from the apartheid racial identity barrier to a new era where they vote based on competition,” he said.

“But Johannesburg could actually be where we cross the barrier.”

Coalition politics to decide the winner

Jacob Seane, 83, a resident of Soweto, a township within Johannesburg, said he had voted for the ANC since the first multiracial elections in 1994 and would never change.

“I think they saw their mistakes and they will fix their mistakes,” he said.

Zille said internal DA polling showed her leading with about 40% of the votes. An Ipsos poll in September showed the ANC at 31% and the DA at 28%.

With no party expected to win outright, the city’s government will likely depend on coalition negotiations.

The DA has had a mayor of Johannesburg twice before, but winning the city back would be a major boost ahead of 2029.

Asked about winning votes across racial lines, Zille said: “I just hope that when people get into that ballot box, the tug of the past isn’t too strong.”