The disruptors: Zille and Zuma shake up the battle for metros

By Jonathan Erasmus and Sihle Mavuso 

At an age when most South Africans have long since retired, Helen Zille and Jacob Zuma are intent on disrupting the country’s political establishment on Wednesday.

Neither seems inclined to surrender the political stage.

Zille, 75, a former Cape Town mayor and Western Cape Premier, now the party’s mayoral candidate for Joburg, wants to rescue the city from its very visible physical and administrative decay. 

Zuma, 84, once president of the country and ANC, now the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) leader, and just recently released from hospital after a health scare, wants to extend his remarkable political comeback by capturing municipalities across KwaZulu-Natal, including eThekwini metro.

There is little doubt that both pose formidable threats to a wounded and limping ANC. But the two political veterans, and the parties they represent, could hardly be more different in the dangers they present. 

Former DA leader