YOUR VOTE | Getting to know Cape Town mayoral candidate Geordin Hill-Lewis

With days to go until the local government elections, and the DA is optimistic it will emerge victorious in Cape Town.

Mayoral candidate Geordin Hill-Lewis was in Mitchells Plain, Khayelitsha and Langa township on Thursday where he promised residents service delivery and an end to load-shedding. 

Speaking to TimesLIVE, Hill-Lewis said he is ready to bring change to the City of Cape Town should he be elected as its new mayor during the local government elections on November 1.

On August 27, the DA announced Hill-Lewis, currently shadow minister of finance, as their candidate for mayor of Cape Town.

The street outside the home of Theresa Thompson, a former DA councillor, was the chosen location for Hill-Lewis’ inaugural address two months ago, a moment he said was reminiscent of his first DA meeting as a matric pupil at Edgemead High School in Cape Town.

“The first DA meeting I attended when I was still in high school was at her house. I was invited to go to a DA meeting; I did not know what it was about. I signed up as a member right there and that is where the whole wonderful story started,” he said.

Experience in the DA

Hill-Lewis introduced the party’s structures at the University of Cape Town (UCT), where he obtained his BCom and an honours degree in politics, philosophy and economics.

The DA, founded in 2000, was still in its formative years at the time. It was the successor to previous parties, including the DP and PFP.

“When I went to UCT, I was surprised there was no DA structure at all. When I asked, there was no DA structure at any university in the country.

“I decided I’m going to start one. I started Daso, the DA Student Organisation, which is now in many universities in the country,” said Hill-Lewis. 

• In 2009 he worked in the successful campaign that propelled DA federal chair Helen Zille to the position of premier in the Western Cape.
• In 2011 he joined the National Assembly at the age of 24. In 2011-2012 he was shadow deputy minister of public service.
• In 2012-2014 he became shadow deputy-minister of trade and industry

Hotly contested mayoral position

Hill-Lewis was contesting the mayoral position with incumbent mayor Dan Plato and former transport MEC Bonginkosi Madikizela.

Madikizela’s race was cut short in April after the Daily Maverick reported he lied in his online biography about having a degree. 

According to the Sunday Times, Madikizela said the party wanted to sideline him from the mayoral race.

Without naming anyone, he accused some party members of having double standards by condemning his alleged qualifications as fraud while some members went unpunished for allegedly doing the same.

An apologetic Madikizela later begged for leniency from the party and apologised before resigning. Plato remained in the race with Hill-Lewis until the DA announced Hill-Lewis as its candidate.

The Sunday Times cited insiders in the party who claimed Plato was angry about the decision and was contemplating resigning from politics altogether.  

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, claimed Zille had held several meetings with Plato to dissuade him from running for the position as mayor.

According to the report, Zille wanted to offer the incumbent mayor Madikizela’s position or another position in the National Assembly.

Zille denied this.

“I do not have the power to offer anyone a position in the provincial legislature or National Assembly and I never tried to dissuade him from contesting the mayoral position,” Zille said.

Explaining the selection process, she said: “We have a call for nominations. Then there is a screening panel that measures each applicant against key criteria the party deems essential for a mayor to have.

“For those candidates who pass the screening panel, it is followed by an ‘open book’ assignment in which we put a complex question to each candidate on which they must make a presentation on to a panel of 20 people.”

Hill-Lewis said the election process was competitive.

“It is a competitive process. When you have a competitive process, you have a winner and a loser. That is the nature of an election. I have lost a lot of elections and I’m sure I will lose more in the future,” he said. 

Hill-Lewis has outstanding leadership qualities: Zille 

Zille sang Hill-Lewis’ praises as she reflected on his work in the DA.

“He is an exceptional individual and that becomes obvious from the first meeting. He combines instinctive leadership qualities with vision, integrity and courage. He was my chief of staff while I was juggling two major jobs simultaneously (premier and leader of the DA) and was outstanding despite his relatively young age 12 years ago.”

Zille is known for her support for young leaders like Mmusi Maimane and Lindiwe Mazibuko. She said the youth are the future of politics.

“I make sure young people get opportunities, and they must then use it or lose it. Some rise to the challenge. Others don’t. That is life. It is critical in all spheres of life to give young people opportunities,” she said.

Campaigning to win the outright majority but open to coalition 

Hill-Lewis said the party is gunning for an outright majority. However, if it finds itself in a coalition with smaller parties, it would work with them.

GOOD Party, founded by former DA member and city of Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille, announced Brett Herron as its mayoral candidate.  

De Lille promised a competitive campaign and made it clear she is committed to serving Cape Town residents, a promise she made during her tenure as e mayor before resigning from the DA in 2018.

Hill-Lewis said smaller parties are a threat to his campaign.  

“I think the biggest threat is small, start-up parties. Even if they take 2% to 3% each that could put our majority in Cape Town under threat.”

Vision for the future

Hill-Lewis said his main goal for the city is service delivery for all residents.

“I want to focus big time on load-shedding. I want to make sure we become the first city in SA to end load-shedding. You can’t grow the economy with load-shedding. You can’t get more people into work with load-shedding,” he said.

A father

Hill-Lewis enjoys driving his daughter to school and listens to a lot of “kids” music.

“I can sing you all the songs from The Lion King, Frozen, Moana and so on.”

He lives in Edgemead with his wife and daughter.