‘Removing the corruption rot’: Helen Zille’s plans for Johannesburg

Seasoned politician Helen Zille is in the running for Johannesburg’s top job, facing a tightly contested race in South Africa’s economic powerhouse.

In a wide-ranging interview with Newsday, Zille outlined her plan for the metro if elected, promising fiscal discipline, stiff anti-corruption measures, infrastructure renewal, and greater citizen engagement.

Announced on September 20 as the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) mayoral candidate, Zille has served as Mayor of Cape Town, Premier of the Western Cape, and leader of the DA, the country’s second-largest party.

She currently chairs the DA’s Federal Council, helping guide the party toward national coalition government after the African National Congress (ANC) lost its majority in the 2024 general elections.

Johannesburg, home to more than six million residents, has been a political battleground since 2016.

The ANC secured just 33% of the vote in the last local election, and years of messy coalition politics, underinvestment, and administrative mismanagement have left governance fragile and service delivery in decline.

Researchers from Wits University and the Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO) note that in Johannesburg, “sound political leadership, administrative stability and financial management have crumbled.”

“Underinvestment in infrastructure maintenance has led to collapsing services, and public trust is deteriorating among increasingly frustrated communities.”

GCRO Quality of Life surveys have shown increased dissatisfaction in city leadership, leaving the battle for 2026 to be fiercely contested.

Zille described the city’s decline as depressing and deeply personal, which is why she put her hand up in the first place. “I’m a daughter of Joburg and I was completely shaped by it.”

“I was born here, raised here, educated here, got my first job here, got into politics here… I owe everything to Johannesburg.”

With a campaign largely centered on her governance record as Cape Town mayor and Western Cape Premier, the DA, yielding arguably its most experienced senior political figure as its mayoral candidate, has shaken things up.

Removing the heads of the snake

Zille blames Johannesburg’s problems on years of ‘entrenched corruption under the ANC.’

She says self-enrichment schemes have turned basic services into profit-making opportunities, with even the city’s water and billing systems deliberately sabotaged to benefit cronies.

Johannesburg’s maintenance backlog, nearly three times its annual budget, reflects decades of neglect. Zille said administrations prioritised looting over service delivery.

“The good thing is that there are honest officials who are appalled at what is going on in Johannesburg,” said Zille, noting that it is terrifying for those who want to be whistleblowers.

Zille plans to establish a forensic auditing system in her office, with safe systems of reporting corruption that protect whistleblowers from retaliation.

“We will have to have systems of enabling whistleblowers to speak that do not threaten them,” she said.

“That is the absolute priority. Otherwise we are never ever going to get this rooted out. We will have to examine the most corrupt entities.”

“We are going to have to replace the head of the snake or the heads of the snake, and we are going to have to clean up from the top down,” added Zille.

Like her previous executive roles, Zille said she would work very closely with the auditor general “to ensure that weak spots are picked up, fix them and hold people to account.”

Ring-fencing utilities and collaboration

Beyond rooting out corruption, Zille emphasised addressing the city’s critical infrastructure issues.

This includes prioritising fixing the broken water systems, stabilising the electricity grid, expanding the sewerage network, and detecting leaks to reduce water loss.

“It requires significant investment in annual maintenance and capital expenditure to expand the infrastructure network. That’s what they should have been doing — but of course, they haven’t.”

“The result is that there’s no money left, and a huge backlog in both capital expenditure and maintenance.”

The over R200 billion repair bill is seen as a symptom of the rot in local government, from chronic underinvestment and maintenance backlogs to unauthorised and irregular spending flagged by the Treasury. 

This city has an annual budget of R89.4 billion, nearly a quarter of which goes to salaries of the city’s staff

Zille said that her strategy focuses on financial stabilisation and targeted investments in essential services, including ring-fencing funding for water, electricity, refuse removal, and sewage.

This is “so that the money can’t be swept out of those accounts and into other projects because cadres want to find vehicles for looting.”

“We’re going to have to ring fence that money and we’re going to have to spend it on the services for which ratepayers are paying,” she added. “All of those things have to be done.”

Collaboration with civil society and the private sector is also critical, noted the mayoral candidate.

“I’m very encouraged by the enormous number of active citizens who are mobilising to rescue their city in every walk of life and with every problem that you can imagine,” said Zille.

“That’s a wonderful feature of Johannesburg. It has a lot of social capital, a lot of active citizens who won’t let their city die.”

“When I’m there, I can see that all they need is a mayor who will get behind them, who will support and facilitate the joint effort so that we can get over the winning line for Joburg together,” she concluded.

Watch Helen Zille’s full interview with Newsday