Helen Zille is a South African journalist, anti-apartheid campaigner and politician. She was born in Johannesburg to parents who fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s. She served as mayor of Cape Town from 2006 to 2009 and as premier of the Western Cape for a decade, stepping back from frontline politics in 2019. She led the Democratic Alliance (DA) from 2007 to 2015 and is now the party's chair.
As DA leader, Zille sought to banish the party's label as the "white party". She recruited and promoted aspiring black politicians, including Mmusi Maimane, who succeeded her as leader. Internal fights ensued when younger black figures espoused policies—notably affirmative action—at odds with the DA's classic liberalism. Zille has admitted to a "self-initiated betrayal" of her liberal values in leading the DA into the ANC's "race narrative arena". In 2017 she attracted criticism for suggesting that colonialism was "not only negative".
Zille opposes Black Economic Empowerment, calling it "legalised corruption". She argues the route to economic change is via "growth and jobs", not redistribution on the basis of race. She views South Africa as a giant cultural experiment: a collision of liberal Western norms and more traditional values prevalent in parts of the ANC and its offshoots.
Zille plans to run for mayor of Johannesburg, the country's commercial capital, in 2026. Polls show the DA ahead of the ANC in Johannesburg. Property values in the city have fallen in real terms since 2010. Power and water supplies are sporadic; potholes can be the size of craters.
When I was 16, I thought there was no hope for my father. By the time I was 20, he had made great improvement.