JOHANNESBURG – In a bold move to highlight alleged years of municipal mismanagement, a 75-year-old mayoral candidate for South Africa’s largest city engaged in an unusual protest. She donned snorkeling gear and took a dip in a large, water-filled ditch that has plagued a suburban street.
Helen Zille, a prominent figure in South African politics, made waves as she swam through a muddy brown pool in a high-end Johannesburg neighborhood. Sporting a wetsuit, mask, snorkel, and a vibrant pink-and-white swim cap, Zille demonstrated her frustration with the city’s failure to fix a burst water pipe that has been neglected for about three years, despite numerous repair efforts.
The spectacle was captured on video and quickly circulated across television news networks. In the footage, Zille can be heard jokingly saying, “And here we are with a free and wonderful Saturday-afternoon snorkel.”
Adding to the tongue-in-cheek commentary, she quipped, “I wonder if there are any fishes in here. Let me take a look,” before submerging part of her head underwater.
While Johannesburg stands as Africa’s wealthiest city in terms of private wealth, it grapples with ongoing challenges from ineffective local government coalitions and deteriorating public services. Nicknamed the “City of Gold” due to its origins in rich gold deposits, the city is home to around six million residents who frequently endure water and power outages, alongside crumbling infrastructure such as burst pipes and damaged roads.
Residents in the city of around six million people often face water and electricity cuts and broken infrastructure like burst water pipes and damaged roads.
Zille, who was previously leader of South Africa’s second-biggest party and mayor of the city of Cape Town, said she’ll stand in local elections for mayor of Johannesburg.
The current mayor of Johannesburg said in a post on X on Tuesday that the pothole was the result of a pipe “that had repeatedly failed over the past three years” and it was fixed and the hole was filled in a day after Zille’s stunt on Saturday.
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