Business Talk – Helen Zille explains how she plans to fix Johannesburg
In this Business Talk interview, Helen Zille discusses the process of fixing Johannesburg through accountability, governance, and reform.
Zille is the Chair of the Democratic Alliance’s (DA’s) Federal Council, and is also the party’s candidate to be Mayor of Johannesburg.
Before entering her career in politics, Zille was a correspondent for the Rand Daily Mail, most famously proving that Steve Biko had been tortured to death, rather than the official story that he had died of natural causes.
After spending the 1980s involved in various NGOs and activist organisations, she joined the then Democratic Party in the mid-1990s.
In 1999, she was elected to provincial parliament under the Democratic Alliance banner, and served as the Minister of Education for the Western Cape until 2001.
In 2001, she became the Leader of the Opposition in the Western Cape legislature, before being elected to National Parliament in 2004.
She served in National Parliament until 2006, when she was elected as the Mayor of Cape Town.
In 2007, she was also elected as the Leader of the Democratic Alliance, and served in this role until May 2015.
She released her autobiography Not Without a Fight in 2016, which was described by the City Press as the Nonfiction Book of the Year.
Zille returned as the DA’s Federal Council Chairperson in 2019, and was re-elected to the same role in 2023.
The interview
In this Business Talk interview, Zille explains why she has decided to run as the DA’s representative for the position of Mayor of Johannesburg.
She explains where her key focuses are when it comes to fixing Johannesburg, including stabilising the city’s finances and rooting out corruption.
Zille then highlights how the current boards of Johannesburg’s utilities are almost completely devoid of experts – such as there being only one engineer on the entire Board of Johannesburg Water.
She explains that as Mayor of Johannesburg, she would have the power to ensure that experts are added to these boards – ensuring the boards become far more effective.
Zille also discusses the problem of citizens not paying for utilities, and reveals how she would go about fixing this issue based on her past mayoral experience.
She then delves deeper into how she would go about rooting out the massive corruption in Johannesburg – including the creation of a very secure reporting line for whistleblowers.
Zille highlights that Johannesburg is still the heartbeat of the South African economy, and good governance can help the city be a key driver of South Africa’s economic growth.
To achieve good governance, it may be necessary to cut down on unnecessary jobs – not the people at the bottom who are actually doing work, but those just below top management level who have received jobs through ANC cadres.
Lastly, Zille discusses Johannesburg’s crime problem – explaining that she would first need to make sure that the JMPD is competent and effective before pushing for it to receive investigative powers.
Watch the full interview with Helen Zille, below.
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