Cape Town Mayor Denounces 'Power Grab'
Zille Sees S. African Democracy at Risk As Rivals Prepare to Eliminate Her Job

By Craig Timberg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 6, 2006

CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- Political rivals have hurled chairs at her, called her a racist, even accused her of undermining South Africa's plans to host the World Cup in 2010. But what really angers Cape Town Mayor Helen Zille is that after six bruising months in office, she may soon lose her job in what she calls, with characteristic bluntness, "a crude power grab" by the African National Congress.

At stake, says Zille, 55, is not just Cape Town but the future of South Africa's 12-year-old democracy. For Zille is not just the mayor of one of the country's largest cities; she is arguably the most prominent opposition figure in a nation where the ANC controls nearly every other lever of government power, from the presidency on down.

In Western Cape, the ANC-led province that includes Cape Town, the Ministry of Local Government and Housing has proposed changing the city's government from a system with an executive mayor to one run by a 10-member committee.

The move would force the dissolution of Zille's fragile coalition and allow the ANC, in partnership with another party, to control six of the 10 seats on the committee, leaving her as little more than a figurehead. All of South Africa's other largest cities have an executive mayor, and all are controlled by the ANC.

"It's trying by administrative fiat to overturn the outcome of an election. And it's a very, very grave warning about the prospects for democracy in South Africa," said Zille, a former journalist who is white. "It says that the ANC is not prepared to lose an election."

ANC officials say they are merely attempting to make Cape Town's government more inclusive. Zille's party, the Democratic Alliance, won 42 percent of the municipal vote in March; the ANC won 38 percent. A truly representative coalition government, ANC officials said, would include both parties.

They also allege that Zille -- pronounced "Zill-a," giving rise to the ANC's nickname for her, "Godzille" -- has overseen a divisive, polarizing government unconcerned about the poor and determined to purge senior city officials allied with the ANC.

"We are going toward a collision course," said James Ngculu, the ANC's provincial chairman. "The government of Cape Town is not prepared to serve the people of Cape Town. It is prepared to serve a section of the people of Cape Town."

Changing the system of government requires several weeks of public consultation but no vote. If the ANC goes forward, Zille has vowed to fight the move in court.

Underlying these struggles is South Africa's ugly racial history. Cape Town, called the "Mother City" because it's where Dutch explorers founded the first European colony on Africa's southern tip, is regarded by many black South Africans as the country's least integrated city, with bastions of white power and privilege little disturbed by the end of apartheid in 1994.

And though both Zille and Ngculu, who is black, say their battle is not fundamentally about race, voting patterns suggest it is a major factor. Of the 91 members of the Democratic Alliance on the Cape Town city council, only two are black.

The municipal area overseen by Zille includes Cape Town's most elegant neighborhoods, university districts and seaside tourist destinations -- all dominated by whites -- as well as the black-dominated Cape Flats, a dense sprawl of poor, crime-ridden townships, including tens of thousands of decrepit shacks made of scrap wood and sheet metal.

Political allegiances follow racial lines, with whites overwhelmingly backing the Democratic Alliance and blacks overwhelmingly favoring the ANC, revered here for its role in overthrowing apartheid and for its pantheon of liberation heroes such as Nelson Mandela.

Complicating the picture are Cape Town's mixed-race residents, known here as "colored," who have less predictable political affiliations. They amount to nearly half of the population, compared with 31 percent for blacks and 19 percent for whites. The support of mixed-race voters gave Zille's party enough votes to narrowly unseat the ANC -- an unusual feat in a nation where, in most areas, black voters outnumber all other groups by such a wide margin that the party rarely loses.

Zille, who took over from an ANC mayor in March, brought an aggressive style to the office. When the ANC-controlled provincial government did not promptly pay years of overdue water and electricity bills to the city, she cut off service to the provincial legislature building for two days. She launched audits of several politically sensitive initiatives of the previous administration and, based on one of them, has threatened criminal charges against the former city manager.

Zille also has continuously criticized the ANC, which she accuses of being corrupt, intolerant and focused more on enriching a small black elite than uplifting the poor. She also says that years of thuggish behavior among ANC activists in townships -- including the destruction of homes, false arrests and the use of kangaroo courts to chase opposition supporters from their communities -- has been ignored by police, whom she portrayed as part of the ANC power structure.

"You can't believe the brand of viciousness reserved by the ANC for its opponents," she said.

Zille campaigned against apartheid, and her husband once was an ANC member. But she has long embraced the cause of opposition politics on a continent where opposition figures have been tortured, raped, robbed and killed by ruling parties determined never to relinquish power.

Post-apartheid South Africa, by contrast, has a record of clean democratic elections, an energetic press, an independent judiciary and few official barriers to political expression.

The picture looks different, however, in some ANC strongholds, opposition politicians say.

Zille said she once watched a mob destroy the home of a black member of the Democratic Alliance -- the attackers also tore the woman's blue-and-yellow party flag to shreds -- while the police remained indifferent.

Mzuvukile Figlan, one of the black party members on the city council, said that his political affiliation once regularly provoked hostility and that his mother-in-law objected when he put a Democratic Alliance sticker on his car.

Another party member, City Councilor Masizole Mnqasela, 25, said he was frequently hassled in his home township of Khayelitsha after he joined the Democratic Alliance. The trouble included several arrests -- including one made in City Council chambers -- for charges that were later dropped.

Mnqasela said that in townships, "any DA member would be harassed, would be regarded as a sellout, would be regarded as a person who is anti-transformation, anti-change."

The attacks on opposition members have decreased, Mnqasela and Figlan said. They can safely wear their party T-shirts now. Constituents often stop by the small Democratic Alliance office in a cinder-block building in Khayelitsha, looking for help.

Mnqasela and Figlan say they worry now mostly when Zille visits because, they say, there is always the possibility of a confrontation with the ANC.

The worst such incident came at a public meeting in April, when several dozen ANC activists threw chairs at Zille, hitting her several times before she escaped into a nearby car. The incident provoked a rare rebuke from South African President Thabo Mbeki, who also is president of the ANC. In his online party newsletter that week, he warned against unruly behavior.

But after the incident, Zille said, she simply drove to her next political meeting, ready to continue making the case for her party and its rare chance at power. And there is no place in Cape Town, she said, where she is unwilling to travel.

"It's not illegal to be against the ANC in this country," Zille said with a smile. "Not yet."