This article presents interviews with residents of Soweto, Johannesburg, regarding the candidacy of the DA's Helen Zille for mayor. It is "in this Ohio diner" but for Johannesburg.
The ANC's campaign this year in Johannesburg and elsewhere is in complete free fall, giving Zille a real opening to do well in the elections.
Soweto is a township to which Black South Africans were segregated during Apartheid. It has developed considerably since then.
Soweto is very much the cultural center of Johannesburg and, one could argue, South Africa. It is a vibrant community with a rich cultural heritage that attracts tourists to sites like the Hector Pietersen Museum and Vilakazi Street, where both Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela once lived. Soweto represents the "median" or archetypal experience(s) of urban Black communities in South Africa. It is full of new arrivals from rural areas but also multi-generational urban families. There are some very successful and comfortable people there, but also strivers. It's full of people who have been let down by the ANC over the decades, and people who benefitted the most under the ANC. Soweto today includes both very poor areas where people live in shacks, modest working class areas, and genuinely upper middle class areas too.
If Zille can do well in Soweto, she can do well in Johannesburg as a whole. The DA is already neck and neck with the ANC in the city, so what Zille wants to do is to take advantage of the ANC's shambolic campaign to breach their stronghold in Soweto.
The article presents the opinions of staunch DA supporters in Soweto, as well as critics and skeptics.
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