I will be honest with you. Going into this election, I am overwhelmed.

There are more than 600 parties and independent candidates contesting.

There are posters on every pole. And in many parts of Joburg, people are going into Wednesday’s vote without water.

So when I had a few minutes with former president Kgalema Motlanthe at the Inclusive Growth Forum in the Drakensberg, I asked him the question many of you have been asking me: how do you decide?

His answer was refreshingly simple. Forget the big ideological debates and foreign policy. Local government elections are about your lived experience.

“It’s the road. It’s the refuse collection. Are the rates not unaffordable?”

He has been around for every election since 1994, so I asked him what he would say to young people who don’t want to vote at all.

His point is that not voting doesn’t protect you from the outcome. Other people will still elect the councillors who decide how your area is serviced. Unless you have a borehole, private security and high walls, those decisions will reach you anyway.

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His advice to young South Africans who don’t know where to start was civic education. Understand where you live, how the system works and where your community fits into the country. Without that context, you end up deciding based on the headline you read that morning.

I reminded him that these days, it’s not a headline. It’s a TikTok. We both laughed.

At the end, I asked for his wish for South Africa. He wants the country to be as efficient as the Springboks. But my question is who is going to be our Siya Kolisi?

“Despairing is not an option at all,” he insisted.

I left feeling a little less overwhelmed. I hope this conversation does the same for you before you vote on Wednesday.

Watch the latest episode of Let’s Debrief and let me know what you think. And tell me: what topics do you want us to unpack next?

Qaanitah

I will admit I went into this conversation a little defensive.

I have spent most of my career in newsrooms. I know what it takes to get a story right: the phone calls, the documents and the editor who sends it back three times before it runs. When people tell me young South Africans now get their news from TikTok creators, part of me bristles.

Then I sat down with Jaxx Amahle and she made me rethink some of that.

If you are on TikTok, you probably know her. About 300,000 people follow her for her explanations of South African news, which she gives in one long take with a notebook of handwritten notes beside her. When a radio host talks about debt-to-GDP forecasts, she translates: South Africa is borrowing more money than it can afford to pay back.

She is very clear about what she is and what she isn’t.

“I’m not bringing any new information into the ecosystem. What I’m doing is breaking down that information and simplifying it. And it’s very important for me to say simplifying it and not dumbing it down.”

I still pushed her. Creators build on reporting that someone else sat in court for ten hours to get. Nuance gets lost. When reach is rewarded, what is the consequence for getting it wrong?

“I don’t do breaking news. I wait for people like you.”

I didn’t expect to find that reassuring. I did.

Her road here also felt familiar. She spent 12 years in events, marketing and running a restaurant. She burnt out, quit and took six months off. I did the same when I left my job as an editor at 30.

But I wanted to understand what sits underneath the videos.

Where does her interest in politics come from? How does she decide what she won’t talk about? And what does it cost her to keep explaining a country that keeps disappointing her?

Part of the answer is how she was raised. She grew up in a political household, and at 17 she was spending her school holidays watching documentaries about the Cold War. Her father once skipped a meeting to sit down and tell her everything one of them got wrong.

Part of it is what this work has cost her. One video on illegal immigration brought her death threats. She didn’t delete it, but she now admits her tone was wrong.

“It does feel like I’m wagging a finger. I’m talking at people and not with them.”

A part of it is a love for South Africa that she doesn’t apologise for. She will tell you it is the best country in the world. She will also tell you that bad politics makes a bad country.

I asked her what she would fix first if she were mayor of Johannesburg.

“Street lights, please.”

It is a modest answer, and it says a lot that it sounds ambitious.

At the end of every Debrief, I ask my guests how they really are. Jaxx gave me three words.

“Exhausted. But hopeful.”

I don’t think you can do what she does and feel only one of them.

I left the studio having changed my mind about a few things. If you are still deciding how to vote on 4 November, or you have ever wondered who checks the people explaining the news to you, I think this conversation will do the same for you.

Watch the latest episode of The Debrief with Qaanitah Hunter and let me know what you think.

Qaanitah

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Hey everyone,

If you’ve been anywhere near South African social media lately, you’ve probably seen the bizarre meltdown over halal certification.

When I first came across the viral clips, I, like analyst Ebrahim Fakir, honestly thought they were parody.

They weren’t. People were filming supermarket aisles, expressing shock that everything from milk and mealies to a box of Choice Assorted biscuits could carry a halaal stamp.

It came on the back of social media claims that South Africa was somehow being “captured by Muslims” and that Islamic practices were being imposed on a predominantly Christian country.

It all got very weird, very quickly. So at The Debrief, Producer Grace Moya and I decided to figure out what was actually going on.

Because there are really two questions here: Why do so many products carry halaal certification? And why has that suddenly become something to be angry about?

We spoke to political analyst Ebrahim Fakir to make sense of everything.

First, the boring bit.

Halaal simply means permissible under Islamic law. Certification on manufactured food gives Muslim consumers assurance about ingredients, manufacturing processes and possible cross-contamination with prohibited substances.

It doesn’t mean someone prayed over your biscuit. And a halaal stamp certainly doesn’t make the person eating it Muslim.

There is also no general government requirement forcing manufacturers to halaal-certify everything on supermarket shelves.

Businesses do it for an obvious reason: they want more people to buy their products.

As Ebrahim explained:

“Surely the question should be asked of the manufacturers, the suppliers, and the stockists of that product for why they stock those products, why the manufacturers make it, and why the suppliers insist that they should have this certification. It must make some economic sense to do so surely.”

So why the sudden panic?

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Muslims are a small minority of South Africa’s population and have been part of this country’s social fabric for centuries. Halaal certification isn’t new.

What is interesting is how suddenly it has become a subject of political outrage.

Ebrahim believes this is part of a broader trend: “It actually comes on the back of a whole range of Islamophobic, bigoted, racist messaging which has been doing the rounds over the past three or four years actually. And it’s part of a broader right-wing agenda to find and demonise a community so that there is effective separation of the races, of the religions, of the people...”

And that is the part that should concern us.

The question isn’t really whether you care about halaal certification. The question is what happens when ordinary markers of someone else’s identity are suddenly presented as evidence that they are threatening yours.

I make this point: today it’s a halal stamp. Tomorrow it could be a ZCC member wearing a star badge or a Rastafarian wearing dreadlocks.

Social media makes manufacturing this kind of outrage incredibly easy. Someone films something, adds an inflammatory caption and suddenly thousands of people are furiously debating something they hadn’t thought about the day before.

South Africa has far too many real problems for us to manufacture new ones. We can ask legitimate questions about certification, costs and procurement. But that’s very different from turning a label on a packet of biscuits into evidence of a grand religious takeover.

Sometimes a biscuit really is just a biscuit. And I am going to be enjoying Choice Assorted this December!

Watch our full Let’s Debrief discussion and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We’re trying to reach 20,000 subscribers before the end of the year!

Warmly,
Qaanitah

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The African National Congress (ANC) is banking heavily on President Cyril Ramaphosa to win over voters across South Africa.

On the campaign trail, Ramaphosa has been pulling out all the stops, trying to charm young and old alike in a push to reconnect with an increasingly disillusioned electorate. Although these are local government elections, the ANC president has taken centre stage, effectively transforming municipal races into a national referendum on party leadership and governance.

This presidential-led strategy comes as independent polling reveals severe electoral headwinds for the ruling party across major urban hubs. Recent surveys conducted by reputable research institutions (Ipsos, MarkData, and the Social Research Foundation) indicate that national support for the ANC has dropped to between 29% and 34%, very loosely straddling a one-third majority. Crucially, polling data suggests the ANC could lose support across all eight major metropolitan areas. The party faces steep competition from the Democratic Alliance in economic hubs like Tshwane and Johannesburg, while battling significantly against the MK Party in eThekwini.

Political analyst Ongama Mtimka provided key context to The Debrief Network, emphasising the severe financial constraints driving strategy on the ground in a ‘high-stakes political contest.’

“Political parties like the ANC that have seen dwindling financial resources have to try and leverage on all of their assets,” he said. “In order to make sure that they get a significant share of the voter pie in South Africa, their grounded campaign that’s used many of their leaders, including president Ramaphosa, is well justified.”

As voters prepare to head to the polls, one decisive question hangs over the race: can Ramaphosa’s charm offensive turn the tide, or is it too little, too late?

If you call Johannesburg home, as I do, you have probably had the thought: maybe this city is just too far gone.

I have. Drive around at night and entire stretches of the city are dark. Traffic lights don’t work. Potholes become permanent landmarks. Grass grows over pavements. Water pipes burst, are repaired and burst again.

Living in Johannesburg sometimes feels like an extreme sport.

And after enough of this, dysfunction starts to feel permanent. And it’s not Joburg alone.

So when I decided to make an episode of Let’s Debrief about whether Johannesburg/ South African can actually be turned around, I called my friend, journalist and author Nickolaus Bauer.

I accused Nick of being a toxic optimist. I am not. Actually, I am a little (a lot) jaded.

Which is how I ended up standing at the top of Ponte Tower in Hillbrow, looking out over Johannesburg and being forced to reconsider some of my assumptions about the city.

Because Ponte presents an inconvenient problem for pessimists like me. It has already been turned around.

Opened in 1975, Ponte was once the ultimate symbol of aspirational inner-city living. Then Johannesburg changed, the inner city declined and Ponte declined with it.

By the 1990s and early 2000s, it had become infamous.

There was no running water or reliable electricity. Rubbish accumulated inside the hollow core of the building, reportedly rising several storeys high. Ponte became shorthand for everything people believed had gone wrong with Johannesburg.

It was, in other words, written off. And yet today Ponte is a functioning residential building again.

People live there. Children play there. Social enterprises operate there. The building that once symbolised Johannesburg’s collapse has somehow become evidence that collapse does not have to be permanent.

That matters. Because we tend to talk about Johannesburg as though it is one enormous problem. It isn’t.

Johannesburg (the same is true for Durban or Bloemfontein) is thousands of smaller problems happening at the same time.

A broken traffic light here. An uncut park there. A leaking pipe. An abandoned building. A library that closes early. A pothole nobody fixes.

Put enough of those failures together and eventually you get something that feels like a failed city.

But the reverse must also be true. Fix enough small things and eventually you start rebuilding a city.

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The Johannesburg paradox

Standing inside Nick’s old apartment in Ponte, we looked out over one of the strangest views of Johannesburg.

On one side, the city was covered in purple. It is jacaranda season, and from that height you can see these extraordinary streaks of purple running towards Rosebank and Sandton.

Then, almost directly beneath this beautiful scene, there were burning tyres on a bridge between Berea and Yeoville.

And I thought: of course. This is Johannesburg. Jacarandas and burning tyres.

Beauty and dysfunction existing almost on top of each other.

But Nick reminded me of something else about this city. Johannesburg remains a place people come to.

People still arrive here looking for jobs, opportunity and a better life. Businesses are still built here. Young people still move here. Immigrants still arrive here.

For all its dysfunction, Johannesburg remains a hustler’s paradise.

Which brings us to the election. South Africans vote in the local government elections on 4 November.

And Nick has written South Africa’s Easy Election Guide: Local Government 2026, which tries to explain what exactly we are voting for.

This sounds ridiculously simple, but it matters. Because politicians love promising things they cannot actually deliver.

Remember; a ward councillor cannot solve South Africa’s unemployment crisis.

Your municipality cannot single-handedly solve gender-based violence.

And as Nick reminded us: a mayoral candidate cannot fix South Africa’s immigration policy.

Local government has much more boring responsibilities. Does clean water come out of your tap? Does electricity flow when you switch on the light? Is your rubbish collected? Are the traffic lights working? Are potholes repaired? Is the grass cut?

That is what this election is about.

And perhaps we should become much more ruthless about judging politicians on those boring things.

Also, Nick and I disagreed about something. He believes active communities generally get better government. Residents organise, pressure councillors, clean neighbourhoods and take ownership of their wards.

I agree, to a point. But there is something that bothers me about this argument.

Across Johannesburg, residents are increasingly doing the municipality’s work themselves. They are raising money to cut grass. Paying people to clean pavements. Fixing public spaces. Filling gaps left by government.

(You can read more from a piece I wrote for The Friday Paper)

It is inspiring and it is also slightly absurd. I keep reminding people that we already pay the government to do these things.

And there is an obvious inequality problem. Wealthy communities can raise money, hire private security, employ gardeners and effectively build a parallel municipality around themselves.

We know that poor communities cannot. But Nick’s larger point stayed with me: Cities are not abstract things. They are built and destroyed through thousands of tiny decisions.

And perhaps that is why Ponte matters. If you had stood inside that building at its worst and described what it would eventually become, somebody would probably have laughed at you.

The same thing happens when you suggest Johannesburg can be fixed. Maybe they’re right. Or maybe we have become so accustomed to decline that we have started confusing difficult with impossible.

On 4 November, we aren’t voting for somebody to save South Africa. We’re choosing people to make sure the rubbish gets collected, the water runs, the roads work and the grass gets cut.

It isn’t glamorous. But perhaps fixing Johannesburg starts with something much less dramatic than saving Johannesburg.

Maybe we just need to start fixing one thing at a time.

Watch the full episode of Let’s Debrief with Nickolaus Bauer on our YouTube channel.

There is a question I keep coming back to: what happens to people who enter politics with good intentions, when the system they want to change starts changing them?

This week on The Debrief, I put that question to ANC MP Fasiha Hassan- Duma.

I have known Fasiha for a decade, since the Fees Must Fall protests. I was reporting on a generation of students who believed they could force South Africa to confront the injustice of who gets an education and who gets left behind.

Today, she sits in Parliament. The obvious question is whether that generation has changed the institutions it entered, or been absorbed by them.

Fasiha knows the criticism. She also acknowledges something politicians rarely volunteer: privilege helped determine which student leaders got opportunities afterwards.

“I think it was a result of privilege, compounded on privilege,” she told me.

We spoke about the safety net that allowed her to delay her degree to focus on activism, leaving corporate law without another job and the depression that followed.

But the hardest part of our conversation was about her continued belief in the ANC.

How do you defend a party to someone who has gone weeks without water? What does renewal mean to a resident who has heard the promises and still has to organise the basics themselves?

And how long can you keep fighting inside an organisation before the fight takes too much from you?

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Fasiha admitted that she worries about what the political environment could do to her. She described the work as sometimes “soul crushing”, while explaining why she still believes staying is worthwhile.

You may find her answers convincing. You may find yourself arguing with your screen. There were moments when I pushed back because the distance between an explanation of systemic failure and the experience of living through it, is enormous.

We also talked about faith, anxiety and the indignity driving young people’s anger. Having helped lead a protest movement herself, Fasiha understands the impulse to tear a system down. Governing has forced her to confront the harder question of what comes next.

I wanted to understand how someone holds on to political conviction while confronting the failures of her own party.

That tension runs through this interview, and it is worth sitting with, whatever your politics.

Watch my conversation with Fasiha Hassan on The Debrief’s YouTube channel, and tell me what you think.

Qaanitah

If you Google “election poll” in South Africa right now, you’ll find headlines like: “DA leads ANC by 13% in Johannesburg as urban politics fragment, poll finds.” That was Business Day reporting on the latest eNCA/MarkData poll. Its headline finding is significant: the poll puts the DA on course to become the largest party in Johannesburg and retain its majority in Cape Town.

But this is just one poll.

Over the past few months, we’ve had at least four major polls trying to give us some sense of what could happen when South Africans vote in the municipal elections on 4 November. There’s been Ipsos, SRF/Common Sense, News24/SABI and, most recently, eNCA/MarkData.And they’ve generated plenty of headlines.

As someone who is deeply interested in politics, and who spends far too much of her life talking to political analysts, I find these numbers fascinating.

I want to know where the ANC is losing support. Whether the DA is growing. What MK is doing in KwaZulu-Natal. What is happening in Johannesburg. And, perhaps most importantly in our era of coalition government, where the smaller parties are sitting.

I’ve always thought polls gave us a useful snapshot of where things might be heading politically.

But the more I spoke to people about them, the more I realised that many of us don’t really understand what a political poll is supposed to do. One of the biggest misconceptions is that polls are predictions of election results. They aren’t.

Then there’s the belief that polls can somehow influence voters: if you tell people one party is winning, perhaps voters will simply follow the crowd and vote for that party.

And then there are those who believe polling is essentially a sophisticated plot designed to favour certain political parties and embarrass those projected to perform badly.

So which is it?

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With just over two weeks to go before we vote, my team and I decided to properly delve into the world of election polling.

I called Gareth van Onselen, a well-known political analyst and pollster, and asked him to come to Debrief Labs and explain it to us.

There is an important caveat here. Gareth’s firm, Victory Research, conducted the polling for the Social Research Foundation’s survey, and he previously worked for the DA. That context matters and you should know it. But Gareth also understands polling, the methodology behind it and, importantly, how to make sense of the numbers.

And there is a lot to make sense of. Because the four major polls don’t all ask exactly the same people the same questions in the same way. Some interview people face-to-face. Others use telephone interviews. Their sample sizes differ. Some focus on registered voters. And, crucially, they make different assumptions about who is actually going to turn up and vote on election day.

That last point matters enormously. You can ask 100 people which party they support, but if only 50 of them actually arrive at a voting station, the election is decided by those 50. That is one reason two credible polls can look at the same city and produce surprisingly different numbers.

And there are some fascinating differences this time around. The broad trends are fairly clear. The polls point to continued pressure on the ANC’s support. The DA has opportunities in several metros. MK appears particularly strong in eThekwini.

But once you dig beneath those broad trends, things get much murkier. How big could the DA’s lead be in Johannesburg? Could MK actually win an outright majority in eThekwini, or will it need coalition partners? What happens in Tshwane? And which of the smaller parties could end up holding the balance of power?

Those questions matter because South Africa’s big metros are increasingly fragmented. Coming first does not necessarily mean governing.

A party can win the largest share of the vote and still find itself sitting in opposition if other parties manage to put together a coalition with more than 50% of the seats.

And this is where I think polls become useful. Not because they can tell us what will happen on 4 November. They can’t. But they can show us where the political battlefield is.

In our latest episode of Let’s Debrief, Gareth takes us through how these polls are constructed, why their results can differ so dramatically and what we should and should not read into them.

Remember, ultimately there is only one poll that matters. The election itself.

On 4 November, voters get to give us the real numbers.

So perhaps that’s the best way to think about political polling: a poll doesn’t tell us what is going to happen. It helps us understand what could happen and why.

While South Africa’s major cities battle crumbling infrastructure, dry taps and decaying road networks, the civil servants running them earn more than the President of the Republic.

As the municipal elections draw near, some 20 days away, public attention must turn from political campaign slogans to the accounting officers holding real administrative power and the multi-billion-rand municipal purse strings.

Across the country’s eight metropolitan municipalities, election posters showcase mayoral candidates and party leaders, yet the individuals exercising direct executive and statutory authority remain largely invisible.

They are municipal managers or better known as City Managers. Their total annual compensation packages command up to R4.8 million, which is substantially higher than President Cyril Ramaphosa’s salary of roughly R3.5 million.

Across South Africa’s eight metros, the officials responsible for running city administrations command substantial remuneration packages, even as several municipalities continue to struggle with audit findings.

Cape Town city manager Lungelo Mbandazayo and Ekurhuleni’s Kagiso Lerutla sit at the top of the list, each with a total annual package of about R4.8 million. eThekwini city manager Musa Mbhele earns more than R4.3 million, followed by Johannesburg’s Floyd Brink and Tshwane’s Johann Mettler at about R3.3 million each.

Buffalo City’s Mxolisi Yawa receives around R2.5 million, while Mangaung’s Sello More earns more than R2.45 million. Nelson Mandela Bay is the exception, with Lonwabo Ngoqo serving in an acting capacity and therefore subject to the municipality’s acting-remuneration provisions. That is about R3.3 million.

The salaries are particularly striking when compared with President Cyril Ramaphosa’s remuneration of roughly R3.4 million to R3.5 million a year.

Here is why you must care: these are far from ceremonial posts. Municipal managers act as chief executive officers, leading the administrative machinery responsible for delivering water, electricity, roads, and sanitation. Yet nationwide, urban delivery is buckling, water networks are collapsing, and municipal financial governance is in severe distress.

SALARY VS AUDIT PERFORMANCE: SOUTH AFRICA’S METRO MANAGERS

Cape Town [R4.8m] ------------------------------ Unqualified

Ekurhuleni [R4.8m] ------------------------------ Unqualified

eThekwini [R4.3m] -------------------------- Qualified / Adverse

Johannesburg [R3.3m] ------------------------------ Qualified

Tshwane [R3.3m] ------------------------------ Qualified

Buffalo City [R2.5m] ------------------------------ Unqualified

Mangaung [R2.45m] ----------------------------- Qualified

Nelson Mandela [Acting] ----------------------------- Qualified

What Does a City Manager Actually Do?

Diagnosing local government failure requires distinguishing political leadership from administrative execution. In an executive mayoral system, voters elect councillors who form the municipal council and elect an executive mayor. The mayor provides political direction, while council determines broad policies, priorities, and budgets.

Translating those decisions into a functioning city falls entirely to the municipal manager. Governed by the Local Government: Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA) and the Municipal Systems Act, the city manager serves as chief executive and statutory accounting officer. This means the legal buck stops directly with them regarding municipal finances, multi-billion-rand asset registers and regulatory compliance.

When a water pipe bursts or a power grid fails, the city manager does not physically carry out the repair. However, the administration they lead must maintain the skilled personnel, heavy equipment, supply-chain procurement systems and operational plans to address infrastructure failures promptly.

When service delivery fails, an entrenched institutional blame game takes over: politicians routinely blame bureaucrats, bureaucrats point to political interference and ratepayers are left without essential services.

The framework governing municipal manager compensation is issued by the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA). Municipalities are graded on population size, economic output, and generated revenue. Metros occupy Grade 6, which is the highest band, unlocking salary structures modelled after corporate executive suites.

The justification for multi-million-rand salaries rests on private-sector comparability. Metros manage massive balance sheets; the City of Johannesburg alone oversees an annual budget of approximately R90 billion. Proponents argue high remuneration attracts top executive talent and disincentivizes corruption.

However, attempting to professionalize municipalities by pegging executive salaries to corporate rates fails when tested against public reality. Paying corporate-level salaries has not eliminated systemic corruption, nor has it guaranteed executive competence. Instead, corporate benchmarks collide with partisan patronage, leaving ratepayers to fund executive-level packages for dysfunctional public administration.

“So that big salary is not drawing the best talent; it is getting the most compliant person to deliver political patronage. So we need to think differently about it,” analyst Tessa Dooms told The Debrief.

Municipal managers are appointed by municipal councils on fixed-term contracts, typically for five years, following interview and screening processes designed to enforce minimum statutory competencies.

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In practice, appointments frequently diverge from statutory principles. A prime example is the ongoing controversy surrounding the appointment of Dr. Floyd Brink in Johannesburg. Candidates overseeing a R90-billion budget are legally expected to possess extensive financial management and operational experience in large urban centres.

Brink’s appointment faced intense legal challenges and public scrutiny because much of his prior municipal background was spent in rural municipal settings and within traffic management divisions, rather than leading major municipal financial or supply-chain departments.

This disconnect highlights a systemic vulnerability: the conflation of administrative capability with political patronage.

Commenting on the structural root of municipal appointments, governance expert Prof. Dumisani Jantjies notes:

"Many of the municipality managers' appointments are a lot political-linked as opposed to competence-linked. So I feel we need to have a different way of thinking of getting municipality managers. There shouldn't be the perception—I'm using the word perception—that they're there mainly to get money to use it for political reasons and so on, hence the appointments become aligned a lot with political principles in particular. So there isn't evidence that they're capable, because if they're capable, you'll want to see municipalities being able to perform."

Data from the Auditor-General tracking executive stability across metros reflects acute administrative turnover:

Nelson Mandela cycled through 18 acting city managers in 10 years (16 since 2020), severely crippling institutional continuity and financial oversight, The Daily Maverick reported.

Mangaung and Buffalo City metros cycled through 4 accounting officers across a single four-year evaluation cycle, diluting executive accountability.

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Then you had repeated court challenges and council interdicts regarding city manager appointments in Johannesburg and Tshwane following coalition floor shifts.

Experts warned that when appointments are contested, the fallout paralyzes municipal operations. In fragile coalition environments, disputes over the city manager post freeze departmental budgets and halt procurement, even as revenue collection and payroll must continue.

Dooms stresses that multi-million-rand salaries actively entrench this patronage system rather than attracting independent professionals:

”These are people running companies. Even [if] a municipality was listed on the JSE, it would be on the top end of it—90-billion-rand budgets per year. Are we let our municipalities, particularly the metros, led by the best? And if we are, then how does it happen? So the idea about trying to almost professionalize and then privatize local government entities... has led to this idea that you attract the best talent by putting the bar in terms of salaries at competitive rates with the private sector.

The problem with that is it is not real politics... The second is patronage. Those managers are managers of political patronage in the main. That’s what it is. So that big salary is not drawing the best talent. It is getting the most compliant person to deliver political patronage. So we need to think differently about it.”

Dooms emphasizes that overcoming municipal breakdown requires political courage to decouple administration from party machinery:

“You can come into political office and make a choice not to rearrange people according to your political preferences, make a choice about hiring the most competent people. That’s what our system was designed around: it was designed around the Mandelas of society coming in and making the right kinds of political choices. And so right now, we need leaders who are going to be brave enough to make those choices, even though it goes against their political party’s interest.”

An official relying on political protection cannot maintain the professional independence needed to exercise their statutory duties and protect public funds, Dooms added.

With local government elections approaching on November 4, public debate remains fixated on political party manifestos and coalition deals. But all experts note that fixing governance in the cities, requires much higher level of accountability.

This story was produced with the support of the Henry Nxumalo Foundation, which supports and enables investigative reporting. Click here to view more on the Henry Nxumalo Foundation

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Geordin Hill-Lewis grew up politically in the DA. He has long been associated with Helen Zille’s wing of the party, so there is some symmetry in the fact that he has followed in her footsteps as both Cape Town mayor and DA leader.

But anyone who has met or interacted with both Zille and Hill-Lewis will know that their personalities are very different.

Hill-Lewis is personable. The kids would say he has rizz. But politically, one of the questions that has followed his rise is whether he can translate his profile in Cape Town into a national one. Polling earlier this year suggested that a large proportion of South African voters still did not know enough about him to have an opinion.

He makes no secret, though, of how much he loves being mayor of Cape Town.

“They both have their pros and cons. I’ve loved every minute of being the mayor of Cape Town. Being the DA leader is still a steep learning curve, but I love campaigning on the ground. I love meeting people. That’s where I get my energy from. I’m very much a people’s person.”

Hill-Lewis’s political style is not particularly combative. That came through when we spoke about his relationship with President Cyril Ramaphosa.

The DA is part of the Government of National Unity, which means Hill-Lewis now has to manage an unusual relationship with Ramaphosa: the president is both the leader of the DA’s largest governing partner and its biggest political opponent.

Hill-Lewis says they speak reasonably often.

“I said to the president upfront he can expect frankness and directness, but always respect. I have immense respect for the office of the president, and I respect him as a person as well. And so we will have sharp disagreements, but never in a rude or disrespectful way. I just say: this is my firm position, this is what I believe, this is why I believe it. Let’s discuss that.”

Interestingly, there is another similarity between Hill-Lewis and Ramaphosa: both project themselves as considered decision-makers rather than politicians who shoot from the hip.

Hill-Lewis certainly doesn’t come across as impulsive. He likes to apply his mind, weigh his options and then make a decision.

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As we were doing the interview, I kept thinking about a question someone had asked me at an event the week before: Could the DA actually lose its outright majority in Cape Town?

Five years ago, that might have sounded absurd. It sounds much less absurd now.

Cape Town is central to the DA’s political pitch. The party presents the city as its proof of concept: This is what we can do when you give us a government to run.

In that sense, Cape Town is the DA’s audition tape for the rest of the country.

The party won 58.22% of the Cape Town vote in the 2021 local government elections. But there are signs that this election could be considerably tighter.

An Ipsos municipal poll published in September put the DA at 46% in Cape Town, with the ANC at 26%, the EFF at 11% and the Patriotic Alliance at 8%. Polls are snapshots rather than predictions, but that result helps explain why the DA is not treating Cape Town as a foregone conclusion.

I am not in the crystal-ball business, so I put the question directly to Hill-Lewis.

What surprised me was how readily he conceded that retaining Cape Town is not the walk in the park you might expect for an incumbent party that has governed the city for two decades.

“I think this is my eighth election that I’m fighting. I always get incredibly nervous. I do. I take nothing for granted. I am outworking all of my opponents in Cape Town.”

He is careful not to sound complacent as the incumbent, but equally quick to tell you how hard he is working to keep the city.

“I guarantee you that I am out from early in the morning until late at night. Every day. Six or seven public engagements, campaigning, you name it. So I’m putting in massive effort to make sure that we retain it. But I would be wrong to say that it’s a sure thing. It is not a sure thing.”

There are several pressure points in Cape Town, but two came up prominently in our conversation: the cost of living and the controversial N2 safety wall.

The latter is a R114-million N2 Edge Safety Project, including a concrete barrier along roughly nine kilometres of the highway. The City says it is intended to protect motorists, pedestrians and surrounding communities from crime and improve safety along the route.

Hill-Lewis puts crime near the centre of his pitch for another term. Housing is another issue he has publicly identified as a priority.

That may rub some Capetonians the wrong way, particularly those who feel they are increasingly being priced out of their own city.

And then there is the wall.

Hill-Lewis’s political opponents have battered him over it, arguing that the City is effectively trying to hide Cape Town’s inequality behind concrete rather than dealing with its underlying causes. The ANC and GOOD are among those that have opposed the project, while then-acting police minister Firoz Cachalia argued that a barrier was no substitute for sustained policing.

Hill-Lewis rejects that criticism as politicking. His argument is straightforward: crime on the N2 is a serious problem. Motorists have been attacked along the route, and the City says the project is part of a broader safety intervention that includes lighting, pedestrian crossings, CCTV and additional metro police deployments.

We were pressed for time, so there were things I didn’t get to.

I didn’t get into the controversy around Cape Town DA councillor Abdulkader “AK” Elyas, who was found guilty in an internal DA disciplinary process of charges relating to false claims about his qualifications and has nevertheless remained a councillor. Recent reporting has placed him high on the DA’s Cape Town candidate list.

I also didn’t get to ask Hill-Lewis whether he sees himself as president one day, although he has made his broader ambition for the DA very clear: he wants it to become the biggest party in South Africa and lead the national government.

And I didn’t ask him about the DA’s position on Palestine. The party has been trying to keep this local government campaign focused on municipal issues rather than foreign policy. Given the limited time, I thought it was more useful to interrogate Hill-Lewis on the election directly in front of him.

On 4 November, voters will decide whether the DA should get more support it got in the last election.

And Hill-Lewis, at least, isn’t pretending the answer is guaranteed.

The full interview is live on our YouTube channel. Give it a watch and let me know what you think.

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There is something strange about the 2026 local elections.

South Africans will be voting for councils across the country, but an extraordinary amount of political attention has settled on one city: Johannesburg.

There are good reasons for that. Johannesburg is the economic heart of the country. Reuters puts the city’s contribution at about 15% of South Africa’s GDP. It is also a city that has spent much of the past five years providing a fairly convincing demonstration of what happens when political instability meets institutional decline.

Since the 2021 local government elections, the mayoral chain has moved repeatedly between the DA, ANC and Al Jama-ah. Johannesburg has had Mpho Phalatse, Dada Morero, Phalatse again, Thapelo Amad, Kabelo Gwamanda and then Morero again.

All the while, the deterioration of the city has become increasingly difficult to ignore.

You don’t need an auditor’s report to tell you something has gone wrong in Johannesburg. You can see it.

You see it in the traffic lights that don’t work, the roads that deteriorate, the water outages, the rubbish, the neglected public spaces and the increasingly strange phenomenon of private companies and residents’ associations stepping in to perform functions we once assumed belonged to the city.

This election therefore raises a question bigger than who gets to wear the mayoral chain.

Can Johannesburg actually be fixed?

That was the question sitting in the back of my mind when I sat down with Rise Mzansi’s Johannesburg mayoral candidate, Lukhona Mnguni.

I have known Lukhona for years. I knew him as an academic, political analyst, public intellectual and activist. I knew him as someone who analysed politicians rather than someone who wanted to become one.

So I was curious. Why would a young, educated person with a perfectly viable life outside politics willingly walk into South African party politics, and particularly into the mess that is Johannesburg?

His answer was surprisingly simple. Johannesburg is home.

His son was born here. He works here. He owns property here. And, as he put it to me, if the city stops working, eventually there is a choice to make: fix it or leave.

But Lukhona’s diagnosis of Johannesburg is considerably more dramatic.

“Joburg is broke and broken,” he told me.

Broke refers to the finances.

His evidence for the decline isn’t particularly complicated either.

“When cities collapse, it becomes visible in the infrastructure, in the filth, in the dilapidated buildings, abundant properties and so on.”

He points to homelessness, unemployment and visible social distress as part of the same picture.

His conclusion is stark: “Joburg is at the brink of collapse.”

Lukhona isn’t really making the usual municipal election argument that electing the right mayor will magically make the potholes disappear.

His argument is about state capacity. Lukhona put the underlying principle to me in one sentence:

“You cannot have quality life without a capable city.”

That, to me, is the more interesting argument of this election.

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We talk constantly about service delivery, but much less about the machinery required to deliver the service.

A functioning municipality is actually quite boring and as a Joburg resident I don’t mind boring.

There was another part of our conversation that stayed with me.

Drive through parts of Johannesburg and you can watch an informal privatisation of municipal government taking place in real time.

Lukhona worries that Johannesburg could increasingly become a collection of functioning enclaves surrounded by decline.

And he makes an important point about decay: it moves.

“The thing is, our decay is like cancer, it’s spreads.”

Lukhona is running for Rise Mzansi, a relatively new party trying to establish itself in an extraordinarily crowded Johannesburg contest. The IEC’s final candidate certification puts 75 parties on the city’s PR ballot.

The latest Ipsos research describes Johannesburg as one of the metros where the ANC and DA remain the leading parties, with ActionSA’s strongest support also concentrated in Gauteng. Importantly, Ipsos cautions that there are still substantial numbers of persuadable voters and that the contest remains unsettled.

Whether Rise Mzansi governs Johannesburg or not, Lukhona says he intends to serve in council (unlike Helen Zille, he says.)

The real test for whoever governs Johannesburg after this election won’t be whether they have the best slogan.

It will be whether the city can rebuild the dull machinery of government: finances, administration, infrastructure, accountability and long-term planning.

Lukhona describes the city as a “microcosm” whose failure could become a much larger South African problem.

Watch my full conversation with Lukhona Mnguni on The Debrief with Qaanitah Hunter. Once you’ve watched it, double-check that you’re subscribed to The Debrief Network and tell me what you think.

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It is hard to comprehend that forty-four people were killed in three mass shootings across South Africa in just five days in September.

The first happened in KwaMakhutha in KwaZulu-Natal, then Wedela in Gauteng and then in Lwandle in the Western Cape.

I have been trying to make sense of that number, particularly because we have become so accustomed to violent crime that even the most horrific incidents struggle to hold our attention for more than a few days.

The recent wave included a fatal shooting at a tavern in Wedela, southwest of Johannesburg.

Photo journalist Rumana Akoob visited the scene of the mass murder in this area shortly after and filed some really shocking images.

But while we are all shocked and scared somewhat, I wanted to focus on the WHY.

I reached out to anti-crime activist Yusuf Abramjee, who explained things to us in a succinct voice note that you can listen to above.

He explained that some 120 people have been killed in mass shootings across the country since the beginning of the year.

I wanted to understand what it would take to stop these attacks, rather than simply respond to them after the fact.

Abramjee has an interesting take. He says that we are approaching mass shootings as individual crimes when we should also be investigating the criminal networks that make them possible.

“We are not dealing with ordinary street crime.”

He points to organised criminal networks, illegal firearms, gang activity and what he describes as a serious breakdown in the state’s ability to prevent violent crime.

That is an important distinction because our response to a mass shooting usually follows a familiar pattern. Police arrive at the scene, investigations begin, politicians condemn the killings and there are promises to bring the perpetrators to justice.

All of that is necessary. But it raises a question that deserves much more attention: what was happening before the shooting, and could it have been stopped?

Abramjee wants government to focus on five things, beginning with illegal firearms.

“Every illegal gun is a potential murder weapon”

The obvious response to gun violence is to get illegal guns off the streets. But recovering a firearm after a shooting is not the same as disrupting the network that supplied it.

If investigators arrest a gunman but leave the people supplying weapons untouched, that network can continue operating.

This is why Abramjee’s fourth proposal, which is to target the kingpins and financiers behind organised crime, is closely linked to his first.

“Arresting the person holding the gun is not enough if the people supplying the weapons and financing the criminal networks remain untouched.”

In other words, the investigation cannot end with the person who pulled the trigger. It also needs to establish who supplied the weapon, who financed the operation and whether the shooting forms part of a wider criminal network.

That is a more complicated investigation than making an arrest at a crime scene, but it gets closer to the question of how these attacks can be prevented.

What did the police know before the shooting?

The second part of Abramjee’s proposal is to strengthen police intelligence and investigative capacity.

“Mass shootings don’t happen in a vacuum.”

His point is that there are often warning signs before an attack, including criminal rivalries, threats and networks operating behind the scenes.

This is where the difference between reactive and proactive policing becomes important.

Reactive policing begins once a crime has happened. Officers respond to the scene, collect evidence and try to identify the perpetrators.

Proactive policing tries to identify threats before they become crimes.

Abramjee’s argument is that where shootings are linked to criminal networks or rivalries, intelligence officers should be working to identify those threats before people are killed.

That does not mean every attack can be predicted. It means the police need the capacity to investigate threats and disrupt criminal activity before it escalates into a mass shooting.

It also means intelligence cannot operate in isolation from the detectives who investigate crimes and the prosecutors who must eventually take cases to court.

This brings us to his third proposal: properly resourced specialist teams.

Abramjee wants detectives, intelligence officers, forensic specialists and prosecutors working together on mass shootings and organised crime.

There is a practical reason for this. A detective may be investigating the shooting itself, while intelligence officers have information about a criminal network and forensic specialists are examining the weapons or evidence. Prosecutors need evidence that can stand up in court.

If those parts of the investigation do not work together, it becomes much harder to build a case against the people directing or financing the violence.

And arresting someone is only one part of the job. The state must also be able to prosecute them successfully.

Why communities need to be part of the response

Abramjee’s final proposal is about community involvement and whistleblower protection.

This is perhaps the most difficult part of the conversation because we often hear calls for communities to work with the police without asking what happens to people who come forward.

Residents may have information about threats, criminal activity or illegal firearms. But sharing that information can be dangerous, particularly when the people involved are part of organised criminal networks.

“People need safe and credible channels to report information and whistleblowers need protection.”

What I found useful about Abramjee’s proposals is that they shift the conversation away from what government says immediately after a mass shooting and towards what the state should be doing every day.

None of these interventions are a quick fix. Abramjee’s argument is that the response has to be sustained long after the initial outrage has faded.

“Mass shootings are not inevitable.”

He says the state has a responsibility to protect lives and that its response must be “urgent, coordinated and sustained”.

I think that is the question we should be asking whenever another mass shooting makes the news. Not only whether the police will arrest the perpetrators, but whether the state is doing enough to prevent the next attack.

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Today is World News Day, and I’m writing to you from a beautiful venue just outside Cape Town.

Bloomberg has brought a small group of African media leaders together to talk about the future of our industry. The setting is lovely. The conversation is important. And yet, if I’m honest, I’ve arrived with a boulder on my chest.

Talented former colleagues at Media24 are leaving as jobs are cut, some without a clear next step. People who gave decades to e.tv and eNCA are sending out their CVs. Everywhere I look, newsrooms are being asked to do more with less, until there is less and less left to do it with.

I knew building a new media organisation would be hard. Lately, though, I’ve felt despondent in a way that’s difficult to shake.

The answer we often hear is that journalism must innovate. I agree. That is why I started The Debrief Network. But innovation takes people, time and money. Those of us trying to build new models cannot do it on encouragement alone.

Eighteen months in, The Debrief has had several iterations. We’ve tried things, changed course and tried again. Our ambition has stayed the same: to bring the news to people who might otherwise scroll past it, and to make it clear enough that they want to stay.

But I keep returning to a question that worries me: if we all end up commenting on the news, who will do the reporting?

Someone still has to make the call. Read the document. Go to the place. Ask the second question when the first answer sounds too neat. Check whether the story everyone is sharing is actually true.

We can make journalism more accessible. We can tell stories in new ways. AI can help us work faster. None of that removes the need for people who verify, think critically and take responsibility for what they publish. I’m stubborn about this because the distinction matters.

World News Day feels a little like celebrating an anniversary during a difficult stretch in a relationship. You remember why you committed in the first place, even while asking some hard questions about how you go on.

I don’t have a cheerful answer this morning. I do have a reason to keep going.

People deserve to know what is happening around them. They deserve news made with care. And if we want that work to survive, we have to value the people and resources it takes to do it.

I’m sad about where we are. I’m still here, building.

I am fascinated by what drives driven people. It is almost never one thing.

Ambition, anger, childhood, opportunity, injustice, ego, service, luck. We are all complicated tapestries of the things that happened to us and the things we decided to do about them.

That is probably my favourite part of sitting down with people for The Debrief. I am less interested in what somebody has achieved than in understanding what made them believe they could do it in the first place.

And for days after my conversation with Tessa Dooms, I kept thinking about something she said.

“Power does not concede without a demand.”

I have known Tessa, or at least known her work, for more than a decade. We have occupied many of the same spaces around politics, governance and civil society.

She is variously described as a civil society leader, activist and policy strategist. I think of her more simply as someone who gets stuff done.

There is a razor-sharpness to the way she thinks about South Africa.

She can diagnose a political problem with the precision of someone who has spent years studying institutions, but she talks about those institutions with the impatience of someone who has also spent years watching what happens when they fail.

Perhaps some of that comes from where she started.

Tessa grew up in Eldorado Park, in a household and community where service was part of everyday life.

That resonated deeply with me because I grew up in a service household too.

There is something about being raised by people who are constantly doing things for other people. It embeds in you an awareness of the other. Somebody needs food. Somebody needs help. Somebody needs a lift. Somebody’s child needs looking after. Somebody’s family is struggling.

You learn very early that your life cannot only be about you.

But Tessa made me think about the limits this too.

What happens when good people spend their entire lives rescuing people from the consequences of broken systems, but nobody fixes the system producing the crisis?

As Tessa put it:

“We don’t just need stopgap solutions... We need societal level interventions that shift entire societies.”

That stayed with me. Because South Africa has an extraordinary culture of community intervention. When something fails, somebody steps in. Churches. Mosques. NGOs. Community activists. Feeding schemes. Gift drives. Volunteers.

It is beautiful and dysfunctional.

We become extraordinarily good at helping people survive things they should never have been forced to survive.

That is where Tessa’s understanding of power becomes interesting.

Working in civil society taught her something that many of us take too long to learn: the people sitting in powerful rooms are, as she puts it, “just okies.” I loved that.

If the people in power are just people, then perhaps we have given power too much permission to intimidate us.

Which brings me back to that line:

“Power does not concede without a demand.”

We often talk about leadership as though it is something bestowed upon particularly special people.

Tessa talks about it differently.

Leadership sometimes begins with the audacity to raise your hand.

To say: I disagree.

To ask: why?

To insist: this is not good enough.

And, eventually, perhaps to say: I think I can do better.

That requires a particular kind of courage, especially for women.

What also stood out for me was when Tessa spoke about the “angry Black woman” trope and her refusal to shrink herself to accommodate it.

Her response is wonderfully uncomplicated:

“I can be angry and right.” I have thought about that line a lot too.

We have become very interested in the aesthetics of disagreement. Was she too loud? Was he too aggressive? Could she have said it more nicely?

Sometimes anger is entirely rational. If your community has no water, anger is rational.

If children are growing up surrounded by dysfunction that adults have normalised, anger is rational.

If governments repeatedly fail at delivering the most basic things required for human dignity, anger is rational.

The useful question is what we do with it. Tessa’s answer is organising.

My conversation with Tessa was ostensibly about politics, governance and leadership.

I left thinking about audacity.

Watch my full conversation with Tessa Dooms on The Debrief with Qaanitah Hunter.

And then tell me below: what have we become too accustomed to accepting?

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I generally don’t enjoy political debates during election silly season.

And yes, I recognise the hypocrisy in saying this as someone who has chaired and moderated many of them.

But too often, debates are political theatre masquerading as voter education. Candidates arrive armed with talking points, moderators try desperately to keep time, politicians shout over one another, and everyone leaves convinced that their person won.

I am not sure how many voters actually change their minds.

But Johannesburg is different this election.

The November 4 municipal election comes at a moment when the city’s problems are difficult to ignore. Water outages, electricity problems, potholes, refuse collection, infrastructure failures and serious questions about the city’s finances have become part of ordinary life.

At the same time, Johannesburg’s politics has become extraordinarily fragmented. The final candidate lists have 82 parties contesting the city. Recent polls do not even agree on whether the ANC or DA is ahead. What they do agree on is that no party is anywhere near the kind of dominance that once characterised Johannesburg politics.

In other words, Joburg voters have choices. Lots and lots and lots of choices.

Which makes the question much harder: what exactly are we choosing between?

That is why I appreciated the town hall debate The Debrief Network co-hosted with Radio Islam and ASRI.

Moulana Sulaimaan Ravat structured the discussion in a way that made it difficult for politicians to disappear into long soliloquies. Representatives from the ANC, ActionSA, EFF, RISE Mzansi, DA and Al Jama-ah were invited to explain not only what is wrong with Johannesburg, but what they would actually do about it. And that distinction matters.

We already know Joburg is broken in important ways. You don’t need a manifesto to tell you that. You need to drive down certain roads, wait for your water to return or try to decipher a municipal bill.

The more useful question is: how are you going to fix it?

For incumbent mayor Dada Morero, that was always going to be the difficult part of the debate. Incumbency is wonderful when things work. When they don’t, every question about the city eventually becomes a question about you.

The moment that surprised me most was Morero’s insistence that Johannesburg’s finances were not in a mess.

“The financial environment of the city is not in a mess... If it was in a mess, we would not have paid salaries this month, we would not be able to pay contractors, we would not be able to do anything... Yes, there are constraints, but the municipality has not collapsed.”

That is an important distinction from the mayor’s perspective: a municipality under severe pressure is not necessarily a municipality that has collapsed.

But it also raises an obvious question.

Only months ago, Johannesburg’s finances were being interrogated in Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts. The city has acknowledged serious cash-flow pressure, with Morero saying in July that Johannesburg had only 12 days of cash coverage, compared with a National Treasury recommendation of 32 days.

So I pushed back:

“Why then did we have that blowout in Scopa where the city’s finances were described as pathetic... ‘extremely alarming’, ‘a horror show’? These were what members of Parliament said about the city’s finances... What you are essentially saying to residents, that all is well, is disrespectful to residents.”

Morero’s argument was that there are constraints, but the municipality remains functional.

That exchange, more than any slogan, is what election debates should be about. Put the claim on the table. Put the evidence next to it. Let voters decide what they believe.

RISE Mzansi’s Lukhona Mnguni brought the energy of a newcomer arguing that Johannesburg needs a different generation of political leadership.

“Young people are not going to be inspired by someone talking about a future that they are not invested in, a future that they’re not going to live in... We need to provide young people with a leadership that resonates with them.”

The problem for newcomers, of course, is the inverse of the incumbent’s problem.

Morero has a record he has to defend.

New parties have promises they have never had to implement.

That is why the useful question for every challenger is not simply whether Johannesburg needs change. It is whether they can explain, in credible detail, what that change would look like.

ActionSA was challenged by a member of the public about its position on migration. Its representative defended the party’s distinction between immigration and illegal immigration:

“When ActionSA speaks about migration, we speak about illegal immigration... It is a crime. When I go to any other country in Africa without valid documents, I’m not supposed to be there. All ActionSA is saying is that if it is illegal, let us clamp down on it.”

The DA’s central pitch was much simpler: competence.

“When it comes to local government, there’s only one political party that has a proven track record of delivering when it comes to service delivery... When it comes to local government level, you can trust and count on DA councillors.”

That is the DA’s claim to voters. Like every other party’s claim, it deserves interrogation against its actual record and against what it proposes to do in Johannesburg.

What I enjoyed most about the debate was precisely this focus on how.

There is very little electoral value left in simply telling Johannesburg residents that Johannesburg has problems.

We know.

The harder task is convincing an exhausted electorate that voting for you will materially change anything.

And that may be the biggest challenge facing every party in this election.

I asked:

“What I’m worried about for Johannesburg is that there isn’t a sense of enthusing voters in the cause and effect that this vote can actually make things better... You’re trying to get a voter that was in primary school, a first-time voter, to vote in this election. Is that enough to enthuse this young base?”

I am still not sure.

I left the debate encouraged by the quality of the discussion, but still earnest about this city I call home.

Because beneath all the ideology, manifestos, coalition arithmetic and campaign slogans, my own wish list for Johannesburg is embarrassingly mundane.

Can my streetlights work?

Can my rubbish be collected?

Can my electricity bill arrive on time and actually be accurate?

Can I please have water at my workplace? Melville never has water.

And can I please, please, please take a walk in a park without being afraid of being killed?

None of this is revolutionary. That is precisely the point.

Watch the full debate and make up your own mind. And let us know: what is on your Johannesburg wish list?

Don’t forget to subscribe to The Debrief Network and share our journalism. It helps us do more of it.

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It has been a year since the Madlanga Commission began uncovering allegations of corruption, political interference and malfeasance within South Africa’s criminal justice system.

After 174 days of testimony from 110 witnesses, it has become difficult to keep track of every revelation. Yet the commission has riveted the country in a way few public inquiries have.

So, I called legal journalist Karyn Maughan for a debrief.

Karyn has followed the Madlanga Commission closely, but she also brings the perspective of someone who covered the Zondo and Nugent commissions. She understands what these inquiries can reveal about the state of our institutions and whether they can still be repaired.

Even after everything she has witnessed, Karyn remains hopeful.

She reminded me that while the commission has exposed deeply troubling allegations, the fact that it exists at all tells us something important: South Africa’s commitment to the rule of law has not disappeared completely.

But after hearing evidence about the alleged capture of parts of law enforcement, I had to ask her the uncomfortable question: Are we becoming a mafia state?

You will have to watch the episode to hear her answer.

We also spoke about the personal cost of journalism.

During her career, Karyn has faced relentless online harassment and attempts to intimidate her. Former president Jacob Zuma even pursued a private prosecution against her in a case that was ultimately struck from the roll.

Karyn reflected on why she refused to be silenced. But what enriched our conversation was her willingness to speak honestly about the toll it has taken.

Journalism is difficult on an ordinary day. It becomes much harder when you are treated as the enemy and constantly vilified simply for doing your job.

I often find myself questioning whether journalism is still worth it. Karyn reminded me that we would not continue doing this work if we did not believe, somewhere deep within ourselves, that it is our calling.

She is almost neurotic about every story she covers- in a good way. She treats each one as though it is the most important story of her career.

She brings the same care to an ordinary criminal case that she brings to the corruption trial of a former president.

I am always fascinated by people who have witnessed some of the worst of humanity and still manage to hold on to their faith in people.

But Karyn often reminds me that losing hope is exactly what those who abuse power want us to do.

Watch my full conversation with Karyn Maughan on The Debrief with Qaanitah Hunter.

I don’t imagine many people are happy when Devi Sankaree Govender shows up at their door.

She is probably there to expose something, challenge an excuse or ask the uncomfortable questions that others have avoided.

But when she arrived at The Debrief, we were ecstatic.

For many South Africans, it feels as though we grew up watching Devi. She became a household name through her fearless investigative reporting and her years on Carte Blanche.

We know the journalist on television: direct, courageous and unwilling to let people evade accountability.

But I wanted to really pick her brain.

Where did she find the courage to ask Nelson Mandela a tough question? How has she remained disciplined and focused throughout her career? And what has kept her asking difficult questions all these years later?

Our conversation offered a rare glimpse of Devi behind the scenes and taught me a lot about her work ethic and rigour.

What struck me most is that she has never tried to turn herself into someone she is not. Her authenticity is not a television persona. She has remained true to herself while insisting on rigour, accountability and journalism that serves the public.

We spoke about her journey, the values that guide her and what it takes to keep showing up with courage.

If you want to know about how to build an enduring career without losing yourself along the way, this chat is for you.

Watch the latest episode of The Debrief with Qaanitah Hunter and let me know what you think. We always appreciate your feedback.

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I went to Sharpeville this past weekend to understand why survivors of the 1960 massacre and the families of those killed are going to court 66 years later.

We know the story of Sharpeville.

On 21 March 1960, police opened fire on people protesting against apartheid’s pass laws. At least 69 people were killed and many more were injured.

Every year, politicians visit Sharpeville. They make speeches, lay wreaths and commemorate Human Rights Day.

But the people I met are still waiting for justice.

Paulina Mathinye was five years old when her father left home to attend the gathering. He never returned.

His death changed the course of her family’s life. Her mother had to raise five children alone. They sometimes went to bed hungry and Paulina could not pursue her dream of becoming a teacher.

Now, Paulina and other families are supporting legal action against the South African government.

At the centre of the case is the Indemnity Act of 1961. The apartheid government used this law to prevent victims and families from pursuing civil or criminal claims linked to the massacre. Lawyers for Human Rights say the law has never been repealed.

The families want the court to declare it unconstitutional and allow a class action to proceed.

But this story is about more than compensation.

It is about acknowledgement. It is about dignity. And it is about why the democratic government allowed these families to wait for more than three decades.

In this episode of Let’s Debrief, we return to Sharpeville, speak to the people who have carried this loss for most of their lives and explain why they are finally going to court.

Watch: This is why Sharpeville victims are going to court in 2026

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We don’t break news. We fix it.

ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has lashed out at just about anyone and everyone after it emerged that the ANC failed to complete the submission of all its candidates for the upcoming municipal elections.

The deadline for parties to submit candidates for the 4 November elections was 17:00 on 28 August.

By the time it arrived, 181 ANC candidates had been captured on the Electoral Commission of South Africa’s online system but had not completed the final electronic submission step. Of those, 130 were on proportional representation lists and 51 were ward candidates.

The ANC initially said it had encountered problems with the electronic system and engaged the IEC about processing the names already captured on it. Mbalula now insists the ANC did not blame the IEC itself for the glitch but is asking the IEC to condone the delay.

The IEC’s position is much simpler: the deadline was the deadline. Capturing information on the system was not the same as finally submitting it.

The ANC has now taken the matter to the Electoral Court, arguing that it is not seeking special treatment and pointing out that it was not alone. In total, 2,274 candidates from 45 political parties had information captured on the online system but had not completed the final submission process.

So why does any of this matter?

The IEC introduced an online candidate nomination system after years of relying on a physical paper process. Parties would arrive at IEC offices with reams of paper, and the process was often accompanied by the usual political drama outside.

Managing candidate nominations for a local government election is an enormous administrative exercise. This year, the IEC received 142,072 candidate nominations for just 10,526 council seats.

It is partly why the IEC made its online system available well ahead of the deadline. The system was available from 21 June, even before the formal nomination period began.

From 21 June to 28 August is 68 days.

Even if you ignore that early access and count only the formal nomination period from 7 August, parties still had three weeks to get their lists in order.

At this point it will be important to note that political parties missing candidate deadlines or failing to pay the required deposits is nothing new.

In previous elections, when the IEC published verified candidate lists, smaller and more obscure parties would sometimes arrive outside the commission’s offices to protest after discovering they had missed some requirement.

The difference this time is that we are talking about the ANC- the party that remains the largest in the country.

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Mbalula has come out guns blazing, insisting the ANC had lodged 9,128 candidates across all nine provinces. Of those, 4,366 were registered with the IEC on ward ballots and 4,581 on proportional representation ballots.

“It is ninety-seven per cent of every ward seat in the Republic, and ninety per cent of every proportional seat. No other party in this country will come to you with that figure, and I give it to you first because it is the frame in which everything else must be read,” Mbalula belted.

It is a strange defence.

Nobody disputes that the ANC remains the largest political party in the country. Nor was anyone suggesting that the ANC had somehow failed to register thousands of candidates across South Africa.

The issue is whether a party with the ANC’s experience, resources and institutional knowledge should have found itself in this position at all.

Mbalula went on to explain:

“One hundred and eighty-one of our candidates were received by the Commission’s system on 28 August and did not complete its final electronic step. One hundred and thirty of them on the proportional ballot and fifty-one on the ward ballot. Two in every hundred. They are in six councils out of the two hundred and fifty-seven in this country: Ngquza Hill and Port St Johns, Walter Sisulu and Sundays River Valley in the Eastern Cape; uMshwathi in KwaZulu-Natal; and Mangaung in the Free State.”

Mbalula’s insistence that the problem affects only a small proportion of the ANC’s candidates is aimed as much at his own party as it is at the broader public.

ANC members and leaders in the affected areas are furious.

As secretary-general, Mbalula is ultimately responsible for the organisational machinery of the ANC. Whatever the eventual legal finding about the IEC’s electronic system, the political question for him is how the party got this close to the deadline in the first place.

The ANC’s case is that this was not simply an administrative failure on its part. It argues that the information was already on the IEC’s system before the deadline and that the Electoral Court must determine whether this amounts to submission.

But Mbalula’s own account also reveals how much was happening inside the ANC at the eleventh hour.

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“On 28 August, at the movement’s Data Centre, in the presence of the First Deputy Secretary General, the Chairperson of the Electoral Committee, the Provincial Secretaries and the Chairs of the Provincial List Committees, I as Secretary General approved every list for lodgement. I did so subject to four conditions, and I want the country to hear what they were. That the mayoral candidates chosen by the movement’s national process be on the lists. That any person with a criminal record, or an adverse finding of fraud or unethical conduct, be removed. That any person under the step-aside rule be removed. And that any person having been served with charges facing a current disciplinary matter in the movement be removed.

“That is what has been reported as a ‘reopening’ of the lists. It was not. It was the movement applying its own integrity rules to lists the National Executive Committee had already ratified, in front of witnesses, on the last day. The ANC promised the people that it is serious about renewal. I would give the same instruction again tomorrow,” a defiant Mbalula told the media.

And in that is the problem. Why was so much still happening on the last day?

The ANC has contested every election since the advent of democracy. It knows electoral law. It knows that election timetables are unforgiving. It knows that candidate nomination deadlines are not suggestions.

Its own internal timeline makes the point more starkly. Mbalula says the NEC approved the lists on 25 August and ratified them on 27 August, the day before the deadline.

The ANC also acknowledges there were problems in its own candidate nomination process, including incorrect or unverified identity numbers.

Against that background, reducing the controversy to 181 candidates who did not make it through a final electronic step misses the bigger issue.

The ANC insists it does not want to add new names or receive special treatment. Its case is that the candidate information was already captured and uploaded before the deadline and should therefore be regarded as having been submitted.

That is now a legal question, and ultimately the Electoral Court will decide it.

From my decade and a half of covering electoral matters, I would be surprised if the Electoral Court readily interfered with a deadline. But the ANC’s case does raise a more specific question than simply asking the court for an extension: what legally constitutes “submission” when a party has uploaded its information but has not completed the final electronic step?

Think of it as a university assignment. If you uploaded the document but did not press “submit” before the deadline, did you submit the assignment?

The court will have to answer the electoral version of that question.

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But there is a separate political question that no court judgment can resolve for the ANC.

How did it get here?

Mbalula’s explanation does not adequately account for the chaotic process that preceded the final submission of the lists.

The ANC struggled to settle parts of its candidate selection process despite boldly announcing that its approach, including the selection of mayoral candidates, would help restore confidence among voters.

There were administrative problems along the way. Mbalula himself has acknowledged shortcomings in the verification of candidate information.

He had to explain to the ANC’s top leadership this week what happened and how the party ended up in this mess.

Whether the leadership accepts his explanation is ultimately an internal ANC matter.

What the episode tells voters is more important.

Submitting a candidate list is one of the most routine administrative tasks a political party contesting an election has to perform. It is complicated at the scale of the ANC, certainly, but it is also predictable. The deadline is known. The rules are known. The consequences of getting it wrong are known.

That is why this matters beyond the 181 candidates.

Local government is, at its heart, about administration. It is about making sure the water runs, refuse is collected, roads are maintained, bills are correct and officials do the jobs they are supposed to do.

The ANC is asking voters across the country to trust it to get those much harder things right.

It does not help its case when it cannot get its own paperwork over the line.

The ANC was once known for its formidable election machinery. It could run wall-to-wall campaigns across the country, mobilise thousands of volunteers and collect political intelligence from communities in real time.

Under Mbalula’s leadership, too many of its organisational processes have instead appeared chaotic.

The Electoral Court will decide whether the ANC’s 181 candidates were legally submitted in time.

But whatever the court decides, it cannot fix the more consequential problem exposed by this episode: a party asking South Africans to trust it to run municipalities first has to demonstrate that it can competently run itself.

I have a love-hate relationship with podcasts.

This is probably an awkward admission for someone who now has an interview show.

I have dabbled with podcasts in various iterations over the last decade and I have always understood their power. There is something remarkable about giving two people enough time to properly interrogate an idea, without having to squeeze everything into a 30-second soundbite.

But I have also wondered whether we have reached a point where we simply have too many conversations.

There are hours and hours of people talking to each other every day. Everyone has a microphone. Everyone has an opinion. And, increasingly, everyone seems to have a podcast.

A lot of those conversations go nowhere.

Some have done considerably worse than that. You only have to look at the influence of the manosphere to understand that long-form conversation is not inherently enlightening. Give a bad idea three hours, a good microphone and an algorithm and it can travel very far.

So when we started thinking about The Debrief with Qaanitah Hunter, I had to make a case to myself, before I could make one to anyone else.

Why should we talk to each other?

And, more importantly, why should you give me an hour of your week to listen?

The answer, I realised, is actually central to what we are trying to build at The Debrief Network.

Our job is to make sense of the world.

Sometimes we do that by explaining an election, interrogating a politician or unpacking a complicated news story.

But sometimes making sense of the world requires sitting across from someone interesting and asking: How do you think?

That became my value proposition.

I wanted to bring people into the studio who could help me understand something I did not understand before. News makers, friends, change makers, people building things and people challenging the way we think about things.

There is admittedly something selfish about it. I get to pick people’s brains for a living.

And there are few brains I have wanted to pick more than Aliyah Allie’s.

Aliyah is one of those people who seems to spew innovation. Her brain appears permanently occupied by the question of how something could work better.

Today, she leads X, bigly labs, the innovation engine inside Dis-Chem that is working on how one of South Africa’s biggest health retailers can rethink the way people experience healthcare.

It is a big job. It involves technology, data, artificial intelligence, digital platforms and redesigning systems inside a huge legacy business.

But that isn’t actually why I wanted to talk to her.

I met Aliyah when she was still a management consultant at a global firm, long before X, bigly labs became part of her biography.

And somewhere along the way, our stories intersected in a way I didn’t expect.

Her mother sold samosas and koesisters to help raise her family. My mother did the same.

There is something about growing up watching people work like that.

You understand very early that nobody is coming to rescue you.

But you also develop complicated ideas about success.

How hard are you supposed to work?

When does ambition become enough?

How do you walk into rooms that were never designed with you in mind and behave as though you belong there?

And what happens when the life you eventually build becomes much bigger than the one you imagined as a child?

Those are the questions that interest me about Aliyah.

Her career is objectively impressive. Before Dis-Chem, she worked at McKinsey. She studied at UCT and Columbia University. Today, she leads a team trying to rethink parts of South Africa’s healthcare system.

But CVs tell us where people went. They rarely tell us how they got there.

This episode of The Debrief with Qaanitah Hunter is really an extension of conversations Aliyah and I have had over the years about success, ambition, work and what it means to navigate a life that becomes bigger and more meaningful than you expected.

Surprisingly, we barely talk politics. Although, as I am constantly reminded, everything is political.

There is something political about two women whose mothers had to hustle to create opportunities for their children sitting in a studio years later and talking about leadership, ambition and building institutions.

There is something worth examining about the distance between where you start and where life eventually takes you.

And there is something powerful about being able to look backwards at that journey without pretending it was inevitable.

Perhaps that is what I want this show to be. Not another place where important people come to tell us how important they are.

I want to understand the things that shaped them. The decisions they made. The things they got wrong. The habits they developed. The ideas they changed their minds about.

I want to know how they think.

Because if you are going to give me an hour of your week, I want you to leave understanding something you didn’t understand when you arrived.

My conversation with Aliyah did that for me.

I think it will do the same for you.

Watch The Debrief with Qaanitah Hunter: Aliyah Allie and let us know what you think.

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Watch this week’s episode of Let’s Debrief, on what’s really behind online Islamaphobia in South Africa

Two months ago, it looked like we understood what March and March was about.

The anti-foreigner mobilisation reached a crescendo on June 30, amid an attempt to frame the movement as citizens simply doing what the government had failed to do: ensuring that undocumented foreign nationals left South Africa.

The panic was palpable.

More than 60,000 foreign nationals scrambled to be repatriated. Others made their own plans to leave.

It could have been case closed.

Except it wasn’t.

March and March promised protests every Thursday. The effort to keep the momentum alive continued, and what had been a largely online movement began organising on the ground across the country.

There were fallouts among its leading personalities. Ngizwe Mchunu and Phakela Ndabandaba appeared to differ over the direction of the movement. Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma continued to beat the anti-migrant drum.

But something else was happening that I found much more interesting, and troubling.

The language was changing.

Spend enough time following these conversations online and you begin to notice that the target is no longer simply “foreigners”.

Increasingly, it is Muslims.

Bangladeshi, Somali, Ethiopian and Pakistani shopkeepers are not only described as foreigners doing business in South African communities. Their religion is invoked as part of the threat. Islam itself is presented as something that is “infiltrating” communities.

Then the targets widened.

Gift of the Givers, one of South Africa’s best-known humanitarian organisations, has faced attacks linked to its Muslim identity. Deputy Higher Education Minister Yusuf Cassim has been targeted and the language of Muslim “infiltration” has persisted.

That deserves our attention because South Africa has a long-established Muslim population. Estimates of its size vary considerably, but Muslims have lived here for generations.

That does not mean Muslims have never experienced prejudice. South Africa has no shortage of racism, misogyny, classism and other forms of discrimination.

But what we are seeing now raises a different question: Are legitimate grievances about migration and exploitative business practices being transformed into something broader and more dangerous: sustained hostility towards an entire faith group?

Or are we misdiagnosing what is happening altogether?

That is the debate at the centre of this week’s episode of Let’s Debrief.

Thembisa Fakude, a Black South African Muslim who grew up in a township, challenges the premise. He argues that what we are calling Islamophobia may actually be an expression of frustration from communities that feel exploited by some Muslim business owners.

Moulana Sulaimaan Ravat, a prominent religious leader and broadcaster, sees it differently. He believes much of the anti-Muslim rhetoric appears to be manufactured and amplified online. And, looking at global trends, he argues that South Africans should be careful about dismissing it.

I think that disagreement is important.

Because it forces us to distinguish between three very different things: criticism of immigration policy, anger at the conduct of particular businesses and hostility towards an entire religious community.

Those things can overlap, but they are not the same thing.

And once we stop making that distinction, a grievance about what happens at the shop down the road can very quickly become a story about millions of people who had nothing to do with it.

That is why this conversation matters.

Also, while you’re here, you may want to read a feature I wrote about for Al Jazeera.I travelled with the Salaam Foundation to Nquthu, a rural community in northern KwaZulu-Natal, and found that the anti-Muslim hatred so visible online, was not reflected in the community itself.

Watch this week’s Let’s Debrief and tell me: Are we witnessing the emergence of a new strain of Islamophobia in South Africa, or are we giving the wrong name to a much more complicated problem?