The DA has announced former MP Haniff Hoosen as its eThekwini mayoral candidate in next year’s local government elections.
The nomination was revealed by party leader John Steenhuisen at the Havenside community hall in Chatsworth on Friday.
He said Hoosen brings experience in local and national leadership, having previously served as the party’s provincial chairperson for eight years before spending 17 years as its MP, until 2024. He had also been a councillor and member of the executive committee in eThekwini.
“He is a man who knows your struggles, who has served you in council and in parliament — a leader who has the knowledge, experience and courage to rebuild this city,” he said.
“Under his leadership, we will restore dignity to our neighbourhoods, invest in our townships, light our streets, fix our water and sewerage systems, and make this city work for all its people — not just for the insiders.”
In his nomination acceptance speech, Hoosen vowed to a wage war on mismanagement and corruption. “Within the first few days of taking over this city, we will come in with a new broom to eradicate corruption and close the taps for those crooks who have been stealing our money,” he said.
He also promised to transform the city’s government and economy by addressing decades of poor governance, speeding up the process of recovering uncollected debt and directing those funds towards service delivery.
“Within the first few days of taking over the city, we will start a process of reducing waste and make life easier and more affordable for people in the city. From day 1 we will start a process to recover more than R40bn that this city has not bothered to collect, and we will direct that money towards fixing the pipes, so people can get better access to water and not have to pay for water seeping into the ground.”
The legacy of poor governance had caused a loss of faith in the municipality, he said, but pledged if elected to restore public confidence by prioritising transparency and accountability measures such as lifestyle audits.
“We have the difficult task of turning around more than two decades of poor governance, mismanagement and corruption. I know and I believe that it is possible.
“We will work hard to restore confidence in this city’s government. This is why I make a public undertaking here today, that if elected as your mayor, I will subject myself and my family to a lifestyle audit every single year that I occupy office, and that audit will be published for all to see.”
The DA is the second-largest party in the eThekwini council with 57 seats, behind the ANC’s 96, with three members in the executive committee. The city is run by an ANC-IFP-EFF coalition, which also includes smaller parties.
The DA is riding a wave of recent successes, including the Provincial Spatial Integration Report for 2024/25 that ranked uMngeni municipality, the only one run by the party in KwaZulu-Natal, as the best performing in terms of service delivery in the province
Steenhuisen said President Cyril Ramaphosa’s recent comments urging ANC councillors to emulate the DA’s approach were a further demonstration of the party’s success in governance.
“There, under Chris Pappas and Sandile Mnikathi, 94% of households have access to basic services, better than anywhere else in KZN. Roads are fixed. Street lights are on. Water flows. Refuse is collected. Living conditions improve,” he said.
“Where the DA governs the best pro-poor programmes have been implemented, helping the elderly pay for water and electricity, improving lighting and roads in the most neglected areas to make them safer.”
The DA's victory in last week’s by-election in eThekwini's ward 64, a ward where the MK Party had received the majority in the 2024 general and provincial elections, showed the country is starting to see the DA as a solution to its governance challenges, he said.
He urged eThekwini voters to remove the ANC and said the EFF and MK were not viable alternatives, referring to them as destructive forces with no interest in serving people.
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“These are desperate times — and desperate times tempt people to look for something radical. But we know the truth: the MK and the EFF are not builders. They are breakers. They are looters. They have no plan, no vision, no interest in serving you.”
He also cautioned against voting for small and emerging parties, suggesting their lack of numbers leaves those votes vulnerable to influences or coercion by bigger parties.
“We also know the danger of small pop-up parties. They may promise change, but they don’t have the numbers or the strength to govern. In the end, their votes are bought, bullied or bent into supporting the very looters and breakers we must keep out. A vote for them is a vote wasted — and in this election, wasted votes could cost us our city.”
Steenhuisen emphasised the importance of every vote, citing the DA’s narrow win in uMngeni as evidence.
“I cannot say this strongly enough: every single vote matters. In uMngeni, the DA won by only 42 votes, and today it stands as the best-run municipality in this province. Imagine what we can do if we win here in eThekwini.
“This election is not just another contest — it is a choice between collapse and renewal, between corruption and accountability, between chaos and competence, between decay and dignity, between building and breaking.”
TimesLIVE
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