Johannesburg mayoral candidate, Helen Zille, kayaking on a flooded road in Dobsonville.
Image: Instagram
In the last few weeks I have felt like I’m in a Monty Python movie. The most creative storyteller couldn’t make this up!
I could hardly believe my ears when I recently heard a radio advert jointly sponsored by the City of Joburg, Rand Water, and Joburg Water, requesting the public to conserve water when it is these very entities that are the worst water wastage culprits.
Based on various reports, the city loses from 30% to 45% of its water supply, which equates to at least 179 million kilolitres per year, or approximately 14.91 million kilolitres on a monthly average. This wastage is through leaks, pipe bursts, and infrastructure failures that the city doesn’t address. Joburgers keep paying exorbitant rates, which are inversely proportional to what we get in return! The irony seems to be lost by these entities and local politicians.
It becomes even more Monty Pythonish when I read that our incompetent city mayor, Dada Morero, who is leading the decay of Jozi, recently participated in a panel discussion at a conference titled "Global Challenges, Local Leadership: How Mayors Deliver Results" at the Harvard University Center for African Studies. Morero sat at Harvard espousing the virtues of a good mayor, when back home we have never been in a worse situation as a city!
You can’t make this up!
For years now, we have also heard how Ramaphosa, first as deputy president and then as president, is heading a water “war room” or a similar configuration—yet nothing comes of any of these initiatives.
Of course, people like Cyril Ramaphosa and Panyaza Lesufi aren't affected, as they either have access to water from their government accommodation or a nice hotel nearby! This is while the rest of us mere mortals, who can’t afford fancy hotels, endure dry taps daily. In some cases, for weeks on end!
It is clear that the focus of the ANC and its coalition partners in Johannesburg is to steal and loot as much as possible before they get voted out on election day on 4 November 2026.
While all these things are happening, DA mayoral candidate Helen Zille, is exposing the literal and figurative rot, maladministration, and corruption in the city in easy-to-understand and entertaining ways. Amazingly, the ANC and its coalition partners have tried to deflect from what is going on in the city.
The current mayor complained that, after Helen Zille exposed a huge unattended ditch of three years, she should not swim in ditches filled with dirty water. The fact that there are potholes and ditches bursting with water in the first place seems to escape Morero.
Morero feebly attempted to make Zille look bad by claiming that her antics are encouraging children to swim in watery ditches. He seems to be oblivious to the fact that he and his administration are the root of all these problems.
As I said, you can’t make us up!
This wasn’t the first problem that Zille exposed; she has swum and even scuba-dived in huge water-filled potholes, canoed in rivers of wastewater, and sat at another water-brimmed pothole, enjoying the sun while her bare feet dangled in the pothole covered with filthy water.
Zilla‘s recent enjoyment of a local soccer game in Soweto occupied great space in Fikile Mbalula’s head and on his social media. The ANC believes that they “own” certain voters irrespective of how badly the ANC governs. Mbalula, and indeed the ANC and their coalition partners in Joburg, cannot understand that residents are sick and tired of the daily trials and tribulations that the city administration has caused.
Zilla is campaigning the old-fashioned way: by meeting with people face-to-face, by listening first-hand to the accounts of what residents experience on a daily basis, and then exposing this.
Voters believe in Jozi. They want change so that Joburg does become the shining city on the hill that it should be.
Manny de Freitas is a South African politician, and former Member of Parliament with the Democratic Alliance