By Phakamisa Mayaba
From a drug-busting, streetwise television presenter in a bullet-proof vest to ActionSA mayoral candidate for the City of Ekurhuleni, Xolani Khumalo is hardly the political suit SAffers are used to. Unlike a Dada Morero or Kabelo Gwamada, or any of the prominent mayors that usually have us scratching at our collective pates to ask, ‘En nou? Who the heck is this guy?’, Khumalo is something of a household name.
Not in politics or academia, or even the clergy, but the domain the whole world knows: entertainment. And if the party’s leadership were headhunting for an easy sell, it won’t take much to convince people of a certain quintile that Khumalo might indeed be the man for the job.
Unlike many of his predecessors and opponents, it wasn’t too hard for MAGA staffers to get people sold on the man famous for Trump Tower, The Apprentice, or any of the many interviews The Donald has sat down to over the years. Sounding decidedly less conventional – nothing bureaucratic about him – and speaking like the dropout, women-loving uncle who kept it simple and called it as he saw it, he brought a different air to contemporary American politics. Less of the political fluff and jargon, Donald Trump was the jackboot cowboy who promised building a wall to keep the undesirables away from the American dream.
‘Moja Love’ (DSTV channel 157), where Kumalo’s ‘Sizok’thola’ show is aired, is a popular black channel, known for controversial, shock-value type shows that feed the social media reels and get pundits riled up enough to write incendiary op-eds. While it’s often criticized as trash TV which leeches on black misery and moral degeneration, its programs nonetheless continue to draw big numbers.
Its presenters — like the controversial Molemo ‘Jub Jub’ Maarohanye who was jailed in 2012 for culpable homicide after he and Thema Tshabalala had driven their cars into kids coming from school, killing four of them and injuring two others — are instant celebrities. Khumalo himself was the subject of controversy when he was charged but later acquitted in connection with the death of an alleged drug dealer.
There is ‘X Repo’, the show you contact when somebody owes you money or an item of value. There are shows about virtually everything – from dancers who don’t wear undergarments to exposing fathers who don’t pay child support. It is amid these disparate offerings that Khumalo emerges. Descending on drug dens at ungodly hours, he has built a reputation as the lone ranger who is fighting drugs on the streets and ensuring that dealers get what’s coming to them.
The sort of township hero who goes where few would dare, and gives the viewer access to how he feels criminals should be dealt with. Forthrightly. In their face. Looking them dead in the eye. If the chattering classes lament the channel’s supposedly obscene attitude towards black suffering, Khumalo’s show offers some redemption.
At a time when both politicians and law enforcement are tanking, people have increasingly been looking for everyday heroes. Not for nothing that people and organizations like Operation Dudula or Nhlanhla Lux have come into the fray. Or for that matter, that General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi’s testimony before the Madlanga Commission attracts the numbers of a prime-time soap opera. Not only is there a palpable appetite to dig up the rot, but there is also the desire to see those who are fingered for it pay. And on Khumalo’s show, there is the perception that he is making the scumbags pay, very fast.
The mayoral candidate speaks
As a result, it comes as no surprise that the fight against crime features prominently in Khumalo’s – or ActionSA’s – 10-point plan for Ekurhuleni. Speaking with Bongani Bingwa on 702 Breakfast, Khumalo said he was offering the residents of Ekurhuleni ‘the basics. So our aim is to fix the basics and make sure that we give them services that work.’
Amongst his list of key priorities is the upgrading of informal settlements. ‘Criminality,’ he notes, ‘has become a lifestyle. Law and order is what Ekurhuleni needs. If you can go to Thembisa right now you’ll see that communities have gated themselves. They’ve created boom gates where there shouldn’t be boom gates because they are afraid of criminals. Criminals must be afraid of the law and the law must protect the people.’
In this regard, he has promised to establish units that will ‘tackle the drug syndicates, the gangs, the illegal mining because those are the people that are terrorizing the communities.’ Also, he aims to make Ekurhuleni ‘investable’ by reviving and upgrading its industrial sector.
As to what qualifies him to the mayorship: ‘I’m a citizen who has experienced these things … the fact that the country has supported me in the work that I’ve been doing in my own capacity and in the capacity of Moja Love it has shown that people do believe in me. And I’m responsive.
‘I respond to the needs of the people. As I was running my foundation, people spoke to me directly, mothers were crying, and we were there to assist. It touches me a lot because I’m from the same background. I’ve walked the streets of Ekurhuleni, I grew up in that community, so I know exactly what it needs.’
Xolani Khumalo with ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba on the day of his announcement as mayoral candidate for Ekurhuleni. Image: ActionSA on X.
It was actually when he was looking for funding for his foundation that he was roped in by ActionSA leader, Herman Mashaba. According to an IOL interview, at this meeting the ActionSA leader simply turned to Khumalo and said: ‘You shouldn’t be asking for help, you should be working on a much broader scale.’
Said Mashaba: ‘How about you become mayor? Clean the city, do what you do, and help the people of South Africa realise what they need to realise.’
The interview answers aside, the question on most people’s minds is whether Khumalo fully grasps the extent of the challenge facing the mayor of this metro (and others). Does it really matter that he is not a career politician? Does he know how deep-seated corruption really is, especially in this metro? Given that his drug-busting work offers little security outside of filming, how much more effective might his efforts be when he has access to a blue-light convoy and the attendant security? Perhaps most importantly, does a television crime-buster have the wherewithal to fix up and maintain an economically strategic part of the country?
In 2021, no party won an outright majority in Ekurhuleni, and ActionSA came in fourth after the EFF, with a total of 15 seats in Council. Over the years, its leader, Herman Mashaba, has made a name for himself as a practical man who delivers results. Perhaps Khumalo has been chosen to give a more youthful, accessible face to the greybeard Mashaba. And of course, that he also happens to be a celebrity doesn’t hurt. Just ask Trump and Schwarzenegger.
Featured image: Xolani Khumalo (second from right) during a televised drug bust in Hillbrow. Image: Xolani Khumalo on Instagram.
This is an edited version of an article that first appeared on Phakamisa Mayaba’s website, eParkeni. Used with permission.