BN Edge | What next for Joburg? Helen Zille weighs in after LGEs 2026

Don't make them very happy to work with the DA mayoral candidate. Helen Zille joins me. Before we go into this, Helen, how long do you have to conclude a coalition? I recall with the national government, I think it was 14 days. Is it something similar in local government? It's the same. It's 14 days from yesterday night or basically 14 days from today. Why so little time, given that there's so

Much at stake. Well, excuse me, that's the time that the Constitution has given us. So you've got 14 days, two weeks. That's going to be a hectic time, presumably, of coalition negotiations, discussions. Have you got this all diarised? Yes. And fortunately, I'm not on the negotiating team this time. That is being led by Ashul Sarupin. He's our chair of the Federal Council. And that duty falls to him. I know he'll do a very good job. I know that he started with a

Framework of principles, which is where we always start, and we move from there. How personal is it? Because I had a conversation this morning with Herman Mashaba, who reiterated again that ActionSA will not support the DA if you are the mayor or candidate. Well, you know, it's personal from Herman's side. And then somehow people make it a moral equivalence. I've never had a bad word to say about Herman publicly. There's absolutely no

Negativity or rancor or vendetta coming from my side at all. We've had our differences at times on matters of very important principle, but that happens all the time in politics. And people can't carry that bitterness on for more than a decade. He says, though, that there's so much toxicity between the two of you from his perspective that he would rather step back and he wants you to step back as well. Well, let me just say between the two of you basically means that it's coming.

From both sides, which it isn't. And just imagine this, Alec. I mean, the very fact that people ask me this question makes me chuckle. Because just imagine if the DA had got 16% and Herman had led the party that got 35%. And we said our condition is that the person for whom 35% of Johannesburg voted may not be the mayor. That would just be absurd.

And no one would actually even entertain that. Because what Herman is saying is his rancor is more important than the voters of Joburg. And then he calls us arrogant. You see, there's a lot of very interesting stuff going on here. And that journalists actually even entertain that argument illustrates to me that they will bend over backwards to make people appear.