Podcast: The Curious Case of the ANC’s Missing Mayor

Rob Rose and Zukile Majova open episode 22 of Sharp Sharp, the weekly podcast on South African politics, money and power from the Financial Mail and Scrolla.Africa, by paying tribute to country music icon Dolly Parton, who died this week at the age of 80.

From there, they turn to the ANC’s election manifesto, launched this weekend in Diepsloot, one of the areas the party has failed to deliver basic services to for three decades. Rob and Zuks pick apart promises of free electricity and water that ring hollow given municipalities owe Eskom more than R110 billion, and electricity costs have risen 900% over twenty years.

The bigger story is why the ANC still hasn’t named its mayoral candidate for Johannesburg, months after first promising an announcement. Incumbent mayor Dada Morero remains in contention despite the city’s collapse under his watch, deputy mayor Loyiso Masuku carries the taint of a Covid-19 era procurement scandal, and the party is now weighing bringing in veteran struggle figure Reverend Frank Chikane instead, though his family reportedly has reservations. Zuks explains why the ANC is stalling right up to the IEC’s deadline, wary of a repeat of Jacob Zuma’s 2024 strategy of peeling off disgruntled councillors ward by ward.

The conversation turns to the Democratic Alliance’s own headache, the continuing fallout from finance spokesperson Mark Burke’s exchange control scandal, and what it could mean for donor confidence in a party built on the promise of clean governance.

The episode closes on the story of a motorist who called South Africa’s 10111 emergency line to report a mob attack in progress, and was hung up on, and what that says about the state’s relationship with the people it’s meant to serve.