Helen Zille

Helen Zille (born March 9, 1951, Johannesburg, South Africa) is a South African journalist, activist, and politician who served as the national leader (2007–15) of the Democratic Alliance (DA), South Africa’s official opposition party, and as the premier of the Western Cape province (2009–19). Zille also served as the mayor of Cape Town (2006–09).

Education and early career

Zille attended the University of the Witwatersrand, where she obtained a B.A. During South Africa’s apartheid era, in which the government administered racially discriminatory policies, she worked as a journalist covering politics for the Rand Daily Mail, a liberal newspaper, from 1974 until 1982. She gained a reputation as being a prominent critic of apartheid, and it was during her time as a journalist that she uncovered the truth about the 1977 death of Steve Biko, leader of the Black Consciousness Movement, who died while in police custody. After the government claimed that he died from natural causes following a hunger strike, Zille headed the newspaper’s investigation into the matter and revealed evidence that he had suffered brain damage and had likely been beaten to death.

Zille married Johann Maree in 1982, and they had two sons. In 1989 she opened a public policy firm, where she was senior partner until she left to serve as director of communications at the University of Cape Town (1993–99).

In the 1980s and ’90s Zille was involved in several organizations, including the Black Sash civil rights group, the philanthropic Open Society Foundation, and the Independent Media Diversity Trust. During the early 1990s, as the policies of apartheid were being unraveled, she served as a technical adviser to the Democratic Party (DP)—a small, liberal, white South African party that would later merge with two other parties in 2000 to form the DA—during the DP’s participation in the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) proceedings that were being held to guide the country’s transition into a postapartheid society.

Political career

Zille became an active member of the DP in 1995 and was elected to the Western Cape parliament in 1999 under the party’s banner. While in parliament she served as a member of the executive council, where she was responsible for education (1999–2001). She later served as opposition leader in parliament (2001–04). In 2004 Zille was elected to serve as a member of South Africa’s National Assembly. She also became the DA’s national spokesperson that year.

Zille left the National Assembly after she was elected mayor of Cape Town in 2006, a position she held until 2009. During her time as mayor, she won the 2008 World Mayor Award presented by the international City Mayors Foundation. She also assumed the leadership of the DA in 2007. The party performed well in the Western Cape during the 2009 elections—it was the only province not won by the ruling African National Congress party that year—and Zille became premier of the province.

As leader of the DA, Zille worked to expand the party’s membership base. To that end, she occasionally pursued mergers with other like-minded opposition parties, such as the one with Patricia de Lille’s Independent Democrats that was announced in 2010. A less successful attempt occurred in 2014 with the nascent Agang SA party, led by Mamphela Ramphele: talks between the two parties collapsed soon after the potential merger was announced.

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Zille’s efforts to increase support for the DA were evident in the May 2014 national and provincial election results, as the party took more than 22 percent of the national vote and improved its standing in the provinces. The DA maintained control of the Western Cape once more, this time with almost 60 percent of the vote, and it rose to the position of being the official opposition party in six other provinces. Zille retained her position as Western Cape premier.

In April 2015 Zille announced that she would not stand for reelection as leader of the DA in the upcoming vote to be held at the party’s federal congress on May 9–10, 2015. Mmusi Maimane, the DA’s parliamentary spokesperson, was elected to succeed her. In June 2017 the DA suspended Zille from party activities in response to controversial comments about colonialism that she had made on Twitter in March. She was scheduled to face a disciplinary hearing in late June, but the DA and Zille reached a settlement before the hearing could be held. Zille apologized for the comments she had made on Twitter and resigned from the DA’s decision-making structures of which she was a member, and the DA halted further disciplinary action against her. She remained premier of the Western Cape until stepping down at the end of her second term in May 2019. She was succeeded by Alan Winde of the DA. Later that year, in October, she was elected chairperson of the DA’s federal council, once again placing her in a position of power in the party.