JOHANNESBURG — Politics can be rife with mudslinging, but a candidate running for mayor in South Africa’s largest city took it to another level over the weekend.
Helen Zille, 75, who is running for mayor of Johannesburg, donned a wetsuit, pink-and-white swimming cap and a mask and snorkel as she plunged into a muddy sinkhole, The Associated Press reported.
Zille dog-paddled through the murky water in an upscale to highlight the city’s slowness in properly fixing a pipe that burst more than three years ago and caused the pool of water.
Apparently, the stunt worked. City officials fixed the pothole on Sunday, Times Live of South Africa reported.
Susan Mottram, who lives on the affected street in the Douglasdale neighborhood of Johannesburg, told the newspaper that residents had been reporting the pothole to the Johannesburg Road Authority for 3 1/2 years.
“The last time they were here they repaired the water leak and filled the hole, and two weeks later it leaked and opened again,” Mottram told Times Live. “(That) was in October 2025.”
Zille had posted a video of herself treading water in the trench, a move that generated publicity from television news crews, the AP reported.
“And here we are with a free and wonderful Saturday-afternoon snorkel,” Zille calls out sarcastically while being filmed. “I wonder if there are any fishes in here. Let me take a look.”
The unexpected visit by Zille in “The City of Gold” certainly got results.
🤣 At this point I want to register to vote in Johannesburg pic.twitter.com/jVe4c3vSfy
— Karabo Khakhau MP (@KaraboKhakhau) March 30, 2026
“The story went online on Wednesday. Helen arrived out of the blue on Saturday,” Mottram told Times Live. “We were all excited and she swam in our little informal pool.
“Sunday morning, the next day, JRA rocked up to fix it.”
Zille was previously the head of South Africa’s second-biggest party and mayor of Cape Town, the AP reported.
Another resident, Debbie Kennedy, said residents had become resigned to the eyesore.
“It’s been there for so long, you actually get used to it,” she told Times Live. “Isn’t that a horrible thing to say?”
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