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Today ActionSA has launched a digital campaign to remind residents of Joburg of the Real Helen Zille which has been carefully concealed in this election campaign.

Johannesburg is one of the most unequal cities in the world. Many residents have been left desperate for an alternative and some wooed by the combination of the seemingly bottomless pit of the DA marketing budget and a desperation to escape ANC failure that they are open to the idea of voting for anyone other than the ANC.

The campaign features a video advertisement, available here, reminds Joburg residents of the Real Helen Zille, with the warning “Beware of who you vote for, you have to live with your choice for the next 5 years.”

The Real Helen Zille is the Helen Zille that declared that Eastern Cape children looking to attend school in the Western Cape were refugees in a clear bid to lament any demographic changes in the DA-governed Western Cape.

The Real Helen Zille posted on social media that "For those claiming legacy of colonialism was ONLY negative, think of our independent judiciary, transport infrastructure, piped water etc. Would we have had a transition into specialized health care and medication without colonial influence? Just be honest." This again seems consistent with a campaign in which she has positioned herself as the great white hope for Johannesburg, without whom we would all be lost.

The Real Helen Zille proudly stated a few years ago that there are more racist laws today in South Africa then there were under Apartheid, drawing a moral equivalence between laws designed to oppress black South Africans and laws established to redress the legacy of an unjust past.

The Real Helen Zille led government in the City of Cape Town and Western Cape the former of which was hammered by the Constitutional Court in July this year for perpetuating Apartheid-era spatial planning and lacking any plans to address it. This is to say nothing of the DA’s plans to build a wall to conceal the face of poverty and inequality to those travelling from the airport into the city.

This campaign is aimed at raising the question to Joburg residents who aspire for a city led by a mayor who wants to ensure service delivery is improved for all residents and not just those who reside in areas that traditionally vote for the DA. It uses these factual events that are a window into the Real Helen Zille and poses the most important question, “can Helen Zille be trusted to deliver to the townships of Joburg?”

Johannesburg residents need to draw the distinction between the persona of a candidate campaigning for their votes and the persona of the person who may be elected to become a mayor. The reason why this campaign causes so much discomfort in certain circles, is because it connects real events to a question that most people, in their hearts, know the answer to.

Joburg residents have only enjoyed 3 years of progress over the past decade and those fell under the leadership of Herman Mashaba. Mashaba’s mayoralty focussed on improving service delivery in all communities, recognising that the nature of inequality meant different service priorities in different communities. His tenure, and the benefits it was producing, was cut short by Helen Zille and the cohort aligned to her in the DA, whose opposition to Mashaba included the notion that Mashaba shouldn’t waste time on communities that don’t pay rates.”

Herman Mashaba has the experience and track record to fix Joburg. He understands the city’s complex history, composition and needs and that the work of a mayor is to build bridges and not walls.

Issued by ActionSA National Chairperson Michael Beaumont