BN Edge | What next for Joburg? Helen Zille weighs in after LGEs 2026

The DA set out to win Johannesburg, and it did: 91 seats, up from 71, and first place in South Africa's economic heartland. But it fell 45 seats short of a majority, and the two parties that could get Helen Zille into the mayor's office both came with strings attached. ActionSA's Herman Mashaba had made her candidacy a deal-breaker; the ANC had spent the campaign on the receiving end of her attacks. Zille told Alec Hogg why she found Mashaba's condition absurd, why she was keeping her hands off the talks, and why she read the ANC's response to its worst local result as a sign that South Africa's democracy was maturing. She also looked back three decades to a hostile press conference at the Carlton Centre, explained the whiteboard triangle she once drew in the Drakensberg, and set out the DA's next target: becoming the biggest party in the country.