DA calls for votes to ‘rescue’ Johannesburg, promises five-year turnaround

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has urged Johannesburg voters to back its plan to “rescue” the city, saying the party needs a majority in the metro to stabilise finances and restore services. The call came from DA mayoral candidate Helen Zille at a Bureau for Economic Research conference in Sandton on 5 June 2026.

Message to voters and electoral math

Zille said the DA aims to win a majority of votes in the Johannesburg metro and stressed how individual ballots contribute to that goal. She noted that the party would need a further 9 000 voters compared with the 481 000 people who voted for the DA in the 2016 local government elections.

She emphasised that each voter has three votes: one for a ward councillor, one for the party list and one for the combined total.

Warning about voter apathy

Zille criticised the apathy of higher-income voters living in gated communities, saying they had a role in fixing local representation at the ballot box. She pointed to Dainfern as an example, saying it currently has an ANC councillor and that voters there “have a chance to fix the mistake they made via the ballot box.”

“We will never resort to the vote buying that has blighted coalition local governments,”

She also referenced a past political event, pointing to the no-confidence vote that ousted former DA City of Johannesburg mayor Dr Mpho Phalatse in 2023.

Plan to stabilise services and finances

Zille warned that turning Johannesburg back into a world-class city would take time because of financial mismanagement. She said, “It will take at least five years as the mismanagement leaves a colossal financial burden.”

As an initial priority she said the first task is to stabilise the finances. One mechanism she proposed is to ring-fence revenue so that money collected for specific services is used to fix and maintain those services. In her words, money paid for water would go to fixing broken pipes, and electricity revenue would be used to maintain transformers.

Condition on implementing the turnaround

Zille stressed that the DA can only put its proposed turnaround into place if the party wins a majority in Johannesburg.