Do we like them?Do we like Helen Zille?
Our score: 3 out of 10. Real anti-apartheid credentials on one side, a four-year run of public posts about trans people on the other.
Zille made her name as a journalist, not a politician. She was a political reporter at the Rand Daily Mail in the 1970s and early 80s, best known for her coverage of Steve Biko's death in police custody, and was involved in anti-apartheid groups like the Black Sash. From there she became Cape Town mayor in 2006, DA leader from 2007 to 2015 and Western Cape premier until 2019.
The story that follows her around is the 2017 colonialism tweet, where she pointed to the judiciary, transport and piped water as things worth considering about colonialism's legacy. Outrage was swift, she apologised, and the DA moved to refer her to its Federal Legal Commission. She later lost a 2019 High Court bid to overturn the Public Protector's report on the tweets, with costs, though in 2022 the Supreme Court of Appeal set aside the Public Protector's ethics finding against her.
The harm check is where she struggles. In 2021 she compared gender identity to racial identity, in 2022 she had a go at a user over pronouns, and in 2023 her tweets about Dylan Mulvaney drew a request for clarity from the LGBTQ+ group OUT. In April 2025 she welcomed the UK Supreme Court ruling on the legal meaning of woman, and LGBTQ+ outlets reported a Facebook follow-up likening trans identity to a trend and to eating disorders; judge that part against the original posts. She frames it as a women's-rights position, and LGBTQ+ groups and her political opponents say it hurts trans people.
She copps plenty of fire from opponents too, and some of it is politics rather than conduct. In 2022 she denied hating black people after an outcry over her poverty comments. In March 2026 EFF leader Julius Malema went after her over a photo from Soweto derby celebrations. Hate or smears aimed at her don't count against her here, only what she herself says and does.
The recent chapter is her late-career run for Johannesburg. She won a seat on the metro council through a DA by-election win in Ward 102, stepped back from the DA federal council chair at the April congress, and was named mayoral candidate. She has ruled out working with the EFF and MK party. The 4 November election left early counts favouring the DA, but no party looked set for an outright majority and the final numbers weren't declared when we checked.
On the good side of the ledger, the anti-apartheid reporting and activism is the real stuff, and it cost her something at the time. What we couldn't find is much on charity or personal kindness, and we couldn't open several key pages, so that's a gap rather than a finding. So: a decent history, but years of public posts about trans people that LGBTQ+ outlets called hurtful is hard to look past for this page.