Cape Town Mayor Helen Zille
defending her job and beliefs
By Andrew Stevens, Deputy Editor

28 January 2008: As Mayor of Cape Town, South Africa’s legislative capital and leading tourist destination, Helen Zille has already overcome an aborted attempt by the provincial government to downgrade her office and an attempted coalition coup since her election in March 2006. Recently elected as leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance, with a background as a provincial and national legislator behind her, she was a finalist for South African Woman of the Year in 2003. Helen Zille has been short-listed for the 2008 World Mayor Award.

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Zille’s role in public life began with a stint as political correspondent for the Rand Daily Mail, South Africa’s leading liberal newspaper during the apartheid era. While at the paper, she emerged as a leading anti-apartheid critic, famously exposing the circumstances behind Steve Biko’s death under police custody in 1977, which was claimed to have been as a result of self-inflicted wounds. She also made her name for herself at the height of apartheid as a member of the Black Sash white women’s resistance movement and as a peace activist in her native Cape Town. She then worked in public affairs as a public policy consultant and as director of communications for the University of Cape Town.

Prior to becoming mayor, Zille was elected as a member of the Western Cape provincial legislature in 1999, serving as executive council member (MEC) for education until 2001 and then as leader of the opposition, before being elected as an MP to the South African Parliament in 2004, also in Cape Town. Zille is leader of the Democratic Alliance, a relatively recent party in post-apartheid South Africa, but with antecedents within earlier parties of the liberal democratic multiracial tradition in South African politics, most notably the Progressive Party of Helen Suzman." As such, this places it firmly as the party of the urban liberal intelligentsia among the white minority population, it being the principal opposition movement within the white-only parliament during apartheid. It has since emerged as the primary opposition party to the ruling African National Congress (ANC) following the new multiracial constitutional politics in the post-apartheid era.

Cape Town itself is regarded as a metropolitan municipality under the South African Constitution of 1996, the highest form of local government and is comparable to unified city-county entities in the US. The City of Cape Town owes its designated status to the provincial government however. The city itself is governed by a 210-member city council, with a 28-member executive headed by Zille as executive mayor, who works in conjunction with an appointed city manager. The council itself is elected by a hybrid proportional system, with 105 members each representing a single ward and the remainder chosen from a proportional list. At the last elections in 2006, the Democratic Alliance emerged as the largest party with 90 seats, followed by the ANC with 81 seats. The council’s work is administered across six specific geographic divisions, which mirror the six former council areas which existed prior to its unification. These are held accountable by six sub-councils consisting of local councillors.

Because of the close-run nature of the 2006 city election results, where the Democratic Alliance was able to form an administration with the support of minor parties, relations between Zille and the ANC in both the city council and the provincial legislature began on an immediately strained footing. Cape Town has seen a steady succession of mayors and interim leaders on account of discredited ANC rule in the city, with predecessors caught up in corruption and internet porn scandals, and it is now the only major city in the country not governed by the ANC.

Not long after Zille’s election as mayor, a plan was floated by the ANC-led regional executive council to downgrade the city mayor’s post to a ceremonial role and the distribute the executive powers among the city council itself, with the need for more ‘inclusive’ governance given as the reason. The “Mugabe-style” plan led to inevitable outrage from both Zille herself and a number of organisations, though the impasse was avoided by level-headed negotiation (Zille advised her party at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa).

A further crisis emerged when the African Muslim Party left her coalition over Zille's failure to comply with its leader's demand for the post of deputy mayor, though Zille later obtained the support of the Independent Democrats to retain her position as mayor. Her combative stand on drugs in the Cape led to her arrest in September 2007 on charges of being involved in vigilante actions, though these were later dropped and she issued her own action for wrongful arrest.  Recently she has risked her position by questioning corruption within the South African police and opposing the disbanding of the anti-corruption Scorpions unit.  These episodes have seen the mayor emerge not only unscathed but enhanced, compared to her divisive and opportunist opponents.

Regarded as an astute media operator, the National Press Club dubbed the mayor ‘Newsmaker of 2006’ on account of her surviving post-election coup attempts and the city’s preparation work for the 2010 World Cup.

Mayor Zille is married to Johann Maree and has two sons.