Ekurhuleni needs leaders, not celebrities

Ekurhuleni is not a backdrop for political theatre – it’s a city on the brink.

With water outages, erratic electricity and collapsing infrastructure, residents are navigating a crisis.

What they need is competent governance, not a celebrity experiment. Yet ActionSA’s nomination of Xolani Khumalo – a television personality with no municipal experience – signals a troubling shift: from policy to performance, from leadership to limelight.

In a metro where service delivery has all but disintegrated, this isn’t just a risky bet. It’s a dereliction of civic duty.

Khumalo built his name on the Moja Love TV show, Sizok’thola, confronting alleged criminals and exposing drug operations. That may make for riveting television, but running a metro of nearly four million residents is not reality TV – it’s public administration.

And that’s where Khumalo’s lack of experience becomes glaring. Ekurhuleni’s challenges can’t be solved with cameras rolling and slogans flying.

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They require a leader who understands municipal systems, fiscal constraints and service delivery mechanisms.

This means someone who can manage engineers, negotiate with provincial departments and make tough trade-offs.

For the record, Khumalo was charged with murder, robbery and malicious damage to property after the death of an alleged drug dealer in July 2023, but these charges were provisionally withdrawn earlier this year.

Since his nomination as a mayoral candidate, Khumalo has talked about fighting corruption and “restoring dignity”, but when pressed for how he will address structural challenges affecting the metro, he offers little more than buzzwords.

This is worrying because populism may win applause, but it doesn’t fix pipes or balance budgets.

Ekurhuleni needs a mayor with technical knowledge, administrative discipline and the patience to build institutional capacity. Instead, ActionSA has given voters a media personality chasing the political spotlight, backed by a party still struggling to demonstrate policy coherence beyond outrage politics.

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The metro’s governance is fragile. Coalition politics have left it unstable, and service delivery has fallen apart. Residents endure weeks without water, garbage piling up in townships and roads that resemble obstacle courses.

This is not a city that can afford leadership in training.

The mayor of Ekurhuleni must be an administrator, negotiator and visionary – not a celebrity activist improvising solutions on the job.

Khumalo’s courage in tackling corruption on TV is commendable. But courage without competence is chaos. The mayor’s office requires deep policy understanding and institutional leadership, not headline-driven populism.

The people of Ekurhuleni need results, not reality-show dramatics. Maybe he should be considered for a mayoral committee position of community safety or be a police officer and fight criminals on the ground, as he has been doing all along.

Therefore, ActionSA’s choice exposes a worrying trend in South African politics, whereby expertise is replaced with charisma. Ekurhuleni deserves a mayor ready to govern from day one.

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Residents must not be subjected to a Kabelo Gwamanda situation like in Johannesburg. They need delivery. And Khumalo has yet to prove he’s capable of turning applause into action.

However, as much as the mayor remains the key player in a municipality, it should be noted that a mayor is not the saviour.

This is because if a municipality is to succeed, the city manager and all line-function officials must be qualified and fit-for-purpose to carry out their tasks.

For no matter how good a mayor can be, if they don’t have the necessary human resources to run the city efficiently, they are doomed.

Ekurhuleni should not be a proving ground for political apprenticeships. It is a city in crisis – and its residents deserve more than charisma and catchphrases. The stakes here are too high for a showman.

The city doesn’t need another performance. It needs delivery. And it needs it now.

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