Own goal or knockout punch?: Zille and the media

By Phakamisa Mayaba

‘As a general rule, I am loath to give any attention to the leader of a political party that could not muster even half a percent of support in the 2024 general election.’ Thus begins Johannesburg mayoral candidate Helen Zille’s brutal, tongue-in-cheek rebuttal of a critique penned by Songezo Zibi in Daily Maverick just over a week ago.

And if that brickbat failed to drive home the message to the leader of Rise Mzansi, Zille went on to mop the floor with this former Business Day editor: ‘You would think, given that your richly financed campaign delivered just 0.4% of the vote, you’d take some time to introspect, rather than throwing slurs at people from other parties who won the hearts and minds of more than 50 voters to each one of yours.’

Drenched in sarcasm, brisk tutorials in politics and unbridled viciousness, if this was a slugfest, Zille might have passed off as a 1980s Mike Tyson. Surgical hooks and uppercuts, head relentlessly bobbing as Mike would weave out of the opponent’s swings without losing momentum, so that when he connected, it was usually lights out for the other guy. Often before the match had barely begun.

Quintessential Zille. Whether in dealings with political rivals, online trolls, or her own colleagues, nothing but the jugular will do. The likes of the well-spoken Lindiwe Mazibuko, once the DA’s parliamentary leader and a Zille protégé, will likely warn against standing your ground against her. According to an extract from a book by the late James Selfe, former chair of the DA Federal Council, Mazibuko often found herself butting heads with Zille.

These disagreements came to a head around the Amendments to the Employment Equity Act in about 2013. ‘Owing to an inexperienced researcher, spokespersons who were fast asleep, and a caucus management that did not deal properly with legislation,’ Selfe writes, the party had supported the amendments in the National Assembly. To Mazibuko, who was always insistent on diversifying the party, this was good news.

But Zille thought the bill was wrong, ‘and the fact that we had supported it was extremely bad for our electorate, who would be disadvantaged by it.’ In an attempt ‘to protect the broader interests of the party’, Zille went on to speak and write ‘very forthrightly on the subject’. At the end of it all, Mazibuko resigned, and the DA show went on.

Yet for all her political acumen and literary prowess, Zille, like the great former heavyweight champion, may soon discover the fatal flaw in assuming that said prowess automatically ingratiates you with your audience; underestimating the intangible qualities of your adversaries; and developing the sort of vanity that entirely ignores counsel from lesser voices.

In Tyson’s case, the ease with which he did away with his opponents led to him not only neglecting his training, but also assuming that the crowd would always cheer for him.

Given her ‘incompetent’ competition, Zille may win a lot of voters. Her party’s record of ‘clean’ governance in the Western Cape, coupled to a coalition Council most famous for rapidly changing mayors, and an ANC blamed for turning the City of Gold into dust, her truculence would be quite understandable were it not for the ill-timed jibe. what’s at stake is not her credentials, or her ability to make Jozi great again, bugt whether she understands the number of votes she could lose just by saying the wrong thing.

Take her recent viral interview with Anele Mdoda on the radio station 947. I hold no brief for this radio host, but even I had to wonder whether – given the massive outcry when Zille first referred to people from the Eastern Cape flocking down to Cape Town as ‘refugees’ – it was wise to defend this nearly 15 years later. Wouldn’t simply putting up her hands and saying, OK, maybe I was wrong, warmed people to her instead?

When Mdoda taps on an issue this writer has been harping on for some time, namely ‘As a black person who lives in Johannesburg, black people struggle to see you wanting to forward them,’ Zille simply asks her when she was appointed as a spokesperson for black people.

‘Twitter is not the voters roll,’ Zille says curtly when told about some of the backlash she gets from Africans on this social media platform. She may well have a point. It’s not the voters roll, sure, but it is the joint where the voter she needs the most usually hangs out – the so-called clever black. Over the years, she has wrestled with the best of them. Follow the dust her tweets have stirred up over the years, and names as accomplished as the poet Lebo Mashile, the satirist Ndumiso Ngcobo, the songstress Simphiwe Dana and the artist Lindiwe Suttle turn up, to mention just a few.

You could chalk it up to tone-deafness — maybe even a propensity to hold on to the familiar the older one gets. It could be shock value — maybe, our mayoral candidate truly believes that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Or maybe our Tyson comparison doesn’t hold quite as true as if we’d said Floyd Mayweather Jr – the retired, undeafeted champion whose flashy lifestyle had pundits convinced that nobody could ever beat Mayweather except Mayweather himself.

Could Zille be trundling down this path? That’s doubtful. With tested men like Herman Mashaba as well as the newly formed Unite for Change (ironically including Songezo Zibi) ready to bring it on, it’s not going to be easy for anybody. So this is when you really shouldn’t seem too cocky, and prepare yourself to deal diplomatically with those moments when the people seem to be fobbing off your campaign efforts. For Mike Tyson, that moment was Buster Douglas. For ‘gogo’ Zille, it might be Johannesburg, especially if she resists the urge to send out those late-night tweets.

FEATURED IMAGE: Johannesburg mayoral candidate Helen Zille in a radio studio. Source: Democratic Alliance Facebook page.

This is an edited version of an article that first appeared on Phakamisa Mayaba’s website, eParkeni. Used with permission.