Overview

• DA leader John Steenhuisen unveiled Zille at a rally in Mofolo, Soweto, formally launching the party’s push to retake the city.
• Steenhuisen cast the contest as a choice between decay and renewal, while Zille pledged to prioritise water, electricity, roads and refuse services.
• Zille invoked President Cyril Ramaphosa’s recent comments praising DA-run municipalities’ audit performance, though the president stressed that clean audits do not guarantee broader transformation.
• Steenhuisen urged residents not to split votes among smaller parties, arguing that fragmentation fuels unstable coalitions that keep the ANC in charge.
• Zille, 74, a former Cape Town mayor and Western Cape premier who chairs the DA’s federal council, enters a city now run by an ANC-led multiparty government and beset by service failures and governance instability.