The die is cast. In Johannesburg the DA came out of the municipal elections 2026 as the strongest party and gogo Zille is beaming with joy. But a coalition is inevitable and perhaps the saviour of Egoli will not stay …

by Jonathan Moremi

When Helen Zille decided that Johannesburg urgently needed a saviour and packed her bags in Cape Town to move up north, she was determined to make change happen. A city on the verge of collapse, plagued by corruption, debts, poor governance and cronyism would turn into a flourishing pasture, if only the gogo would get her hands on it. After all, and there is hardly any arguing about this, she turned Cape Town around that to this day is proving that change can happen. Although it has to be admitted that Cape Town in 2006, when Zille became its mayor, was nowhere near the disastrous state that Johannesburg is in today.

And yet, gogo Zille, now at 75, was adamant that if only she took it upon herself to sacrifice her private bliss (her husband refused to follow her to Joburg), she could make the miracle happen. So when she arrived in the City that once was gold, she feverishly went to work, dreaming loudly about what she could achieve if 51% or more of the population of Johannesburg would give her the vote.

Fast-forward a year later to November 2026, and those 51% have melted down to winning a mere 34.79%. Which does not alter the fact that the African National Congress (ANC) landed at a miserable 20.25%, giving the Democratic Alliance (DA) 91 seats over only 63 seats for the ANC. For the DA, no doubt, this is a win, despite the relatively small number, as it went up eight percent from the 26.14% achieved in the municipal election in 2021, while the ANC dropped from its 33.6% to a new dismal low. The tables have thus turned and the 91 seats the ANC used to hold are now firmly in the hands of the DA, while the ANC has to make do with only 63 seats, eight seats less even than the 71 seats the DA held since 2021.

A triumph for the gogo, undoubtedly, who fought tooth and nail and with often media attention focused campaign theatrics that occasionally bordered on the absurd. Not withstanding the fact that they did get the point across that the ANC mayor of Joburg, Dada (Dodo) Morero, was a catastrophe of unbearable proportions and did nothing to alleviate the rightful grievances of the people of that wonderful city. Egoli had become barely a shadow of itself under his rule and his attempt to defend the indefensible failure of his administration was as futile as it was outrageous. The citizens of Johannesburg clearly deserved better.

In came GodZille, as Zille tellingly calls herself on her X-account, the giant that could take up the insurmountable task of fixing the impossible. But while Zille tried every trick in the book to make her campaign a success, the backlash she faced on a broad level from people disturbed by her firm belief that she, and only she, would be able to save the sinking ship, grew louder and louder. And as the months of exhausting campaigning started to take its toll on the 75-year-old, it was hard not to notice that she seemed to lose steam in the optimism once held that she needed only to announce her arrival and Johannesburg would rise to its feet to greet her.

The ‘saviour‘ erred

Slowly the gogo started to prepare for a possible defeat and the urge to leave Johannesburg and get back to the private life she had left behind in Cape Town. When asked in several interviews in the last months, if she would stay should the DA not win a majority, her responses were vague and deliberately evasive. Her basic line was that she had given it all, sacrificed everything for saving Johannesburg from its inevitable destruction and that it was now up to the people of Joburg to go out and vote for her and show that they too, as much as she did, loved their city. Pressed by interviewers to be more precise, she harshly stressed that if the voters in Joburg did not love their city enough to vote for her, then why should she! And left it at that. From this it was clear what her answer boiled down to: She would go home if she did not get the majority she wanted.

The idea that love for Johannesburg could only be expressed by voting for Helen Zille from the DA, alienated not few in the city. Why would voting for another candidate mean not loving one’s city when there were indeed alternatives around that were actually true inhabitants of Joburg and showed a huge affection for the battered home they lived it? Just think of Lukhona Mnguni from RISE Mzansi, whose intense devotion to his city was clear to see in his campaigning and is hardly disputable. The notion that Zille, and only Zille, who did not even live in Johannesburg but has stayed in Cape Town over the last four decades, should be the sole possible saviour to chose, a notion Zille did not tire to point out as the one and only truth for Johannesburg, was considered by many to be the arrogance that Zille has often been accused of. She never backs off then, but instead reiterates her stance of unfailed singularity in fixing cities, and this continued elevation of herself to the exclusive saviour position has angered many who feel it could have to do with her dubious views on colonialism, that, as she once pointed out, she thought had not been all bad. After all it fixed the pipes.

Naturally, a political candidate and a mayoral one at that must be convinced that she or he can get the job done. But the way Zille went about it at times sounded as if a missionary had stepped into the darkest parts of Africa to tell the illiterate savage locals of the good that would come to them if they only listened to the enlightened white (wo)man. And what that led to is historically on record and dubious at best. Zille’s undeterred position of entitlement was one reason why, with all due respect of winning eight percent more than in 2021, she could not achieve the majority she so hoped for. The people simply did not trust her enough, and she often made it easy for them to be sceptical.

Will she stay?

With the 51% that Zille dreamed of now out of sight, the question of course is whether she will stay or go home. It was interesting to see in the last weeks of hard campaigning that Zille’s stance on this seemed to shift once more. Energised by polls and undoubtedly a good team to support her, Zille went from sulking back to fighting, and started to show a spirit that indicated she could be here to stay.

When asked by numerous journalists during the counting of the votes how she felt, Zille was jubilant at the result of 34.79% and beamed: ”Thank you so much to approximately 433,000 voters who came out to vote for the DA in both ballots. Thank you very, very much! 433,000 voters wanted to save Joburg. And we won’t let you down!“ Not really a position that would allow you to break your promise, furiously pack your bags and sulkingly leave those behind you just praised and thanked.

And when asked about possible coalitions – because as things now stand the DA will have to go into a coalition with either the ANC or ActionSA to form a majority government – Zille put on her sweetest distracting smile of the ignorant, pointing out that that was for the top brass of the DA to work out and negotiate and that she was ”not on the negotiating team” and had ”no mandate” and could not come ”from the outside” and ”start interfering”. An amazing stand to take for a woman who never considered herself to be ’outside’ the DA nor felt restricted in interfering, as not few disgruntled DA leaders had to find out in the past. Zille quickly added, that before the negotiating team reaches a deal, ”they usually consult us” (not explaining if her ”us” was copied from the Queen of England or who exactly was behind it).

With this Zille has now signalled that if the leaders of her party decide that the DA should take up mayorship of Johannesburg in a coalition either with the ANC or ActionSA, something she herself had already proposed as a preferred way, the chances that she’ll go for the post she fought so hard for are high. She wanted this job badly as another trophy in her political career, and she never pretended to believe getting Joburg back on its feet would be an easy task. On the contrary, as she often pointed out. Thus a coalition with the ANC might not be a deterrent, given that the DA and the ANC are used to this combination by being in the GNU. The trouble coming with such a marriage is nothing new to the gogo. And with regard to ActionSA, a possible coalition depends more on whether party leader Herman Mashaba is able to overcome his refusal to work with Zille. At the moment, at least, it seems GodZille has even an appetite for this.

The bags might yet not be packed. The next two weeks in which coalitions have to be formed will tell if they stay empty or get furiously filled after all.