Adam Habib’s Support for Helen Zille Raises Questions About Political Accountability

Motala’s criticism follows Habib’s posts on X, where the university vice-chancellor dismissed some people questioning his support for Zille as “middle-class intellectuals”, including critics from Durban. The remark, Motala argues, shifts attention away from the substance of the debate and treats a person’s social background as a reason to discount their argument.

At the centre of the dispute is Habib’s assessment of Johannesburg after travelling through the city. He pointed to power outages, poor roads and the contrast with Cape Town, presenting Zille as the candidate best placed to turn the city around.

Motala argues that residents do not need a visiting academic to confirm Johannesburg’s visible problems. The more important question, he says, is whether an assessment of the city’s administration is enough to establish that Zille alone can rescue it, or that Cape Town provides an answer for poor residents.

Service delivery is not the same as justice

Motala’s central argument is that Habib conflates efficient administration with just policy. A government can collect revenue effectively and maintain attractive commercial areas while leaving deeper patterns of exclusion untouched.

For Motala, political judgement must include questions about whose needs receive priority and how public resources are distributed. The ability to manage services, he argues, does not automatically make the policies being administered fair.

He uses the legacy of apartheid to underline the distinction. In his view, South Africa’s history demonstrates that the efficient implementation of an unjust system cannot be treated as evidence of good government.

The housing question in Cape Town

Motala points to the Constitutional Court’s unanimous judgment in the Tafelberg matter as a significant challenge to the picture of Cape Town as a model for the poor. The case concerned social housing obligations in the Cape Town central business district and Sea Point.

The court found failures by both the DA-led Western Cape government and the City of Cape Town and ordered them to report to the High Court. It also found that the provincial government’s reliance on cheaper development on the urban periphery perpetuated spatial inequality, while the city had not justified excluding well-located areas from consideration.

The judgment is important because housing is not only about having a structure to live in. Location affects access to employment, transport, schools and other opportunities. Motala argues that a housing programme can therefore fall short even when it provides units, if those homes leave residents far from the places where they work and access services.

He accepts Habib’s observation that poor people cannot simply buy their way out of failing services. But he adds that they also cannot buy access to well-located neighbourhoods when public housing programmes do not provide it. The time and income lost by township residents travelling to work, he argues, should form part of any serious assessment of whether a city works for poor communities.

Looking beyond Cape Town’s postcard image

Motala also challenges what he describes as Habib’s limited view of Cape Town’s performance. He points to violence in impoverished communities and cites the Western Cape’s 2025 Provincial Economic Review and Outlook, which reported that a province with less than 12% of the national population accounted for nearly 90% of South Africa’s gang-related murders.

The province’s annual safety report identified impoverished communities among the main murder hotspots. Motala names Delft, Nyanga, Mfuleni, Philippi East and Khayelitsha as places that should be included in any evaluation of the Western Cape’s record.

He acknowledges that national government and the police have responsibilities for public safety, and that the figures concern gang-related killings rather than every murder. His criticism is that the DA should not receive broad credit for successful administration while the suffering of poor communities is left outside the assessment.

In Motala’s view, invoking poor residents in support of a political argument requires more than pointing to visible service delivery. It also requires examining their experience of housing, transport, safety and access to economic opportunity.

Gaza and the question of political judgement

The disagreement extends beyond local government. Motala criticises Habib’s treatment of Zille’s position on Gaza, saying that describing her as someone who “cannot pronounce genocide” reduces a political dispute to a question of wording.

He notes that Habib previously called Zille’s position “horrible” and “hypocritical”, but argues that his language became more restrained while campaigning for her. For Motala, the issue is not whether Zille can use a particular term. It is what her position indicates about political judgement towards an oppressed people.

Motala also links the argument to Habib’s conduct at SOAS. He says Habib berated a Palestinian activist and defended sanctions against students involved in Palestine solidarity activism. SOAS has said the sanctions concerned misconduct rather than political views. That explanation has been contested: the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies challenged the expulsion of Palestine Society president Haya Adam, while a parliamentary motion condemned the treatment of protesting students.

Motala describes the contrast as a form of political indulgence. In his interpretation, powerful political figures receive room for their positions to be treated as imperfections, while students confronting those positions face an emphasis on rules and sanctions.

What the endorsement says about accountability

Motala argues that Zille’s record and public statements cannot be separated from any assessment of her fitness to govern. He points to her claim that colonialism’s legacy was not entirely negative and to her description of pupils from the Eastern Cape as “refugees”.

Those remarks, he says, should be part of the public evaluation of her candidacy rather than set aside in exchange for expectations of competent administration. His wider concern is that administrative effectiveness is being used to excuse political positions that should remain subject to scrutiny.

Johannesburg’s residents, Motala concludes, need not accept Habib’s recommendation without question. The city’s problems are real, but so are the wider questions about housing, inequality, safety and political accountability.

His argument is ultimately that a journey through Johannesburg cannot provide a complete measure of government performance, just as a well-run commercial district cannot stand in for the experience of poor residents. Any credible political assessment, he suggests, must examine both how government operates and whom its choices serve.