From Astoria to Athlone: What Zohran Mamdani's Mayoral Run Means for Cape Town's Future Politics
Faiez Jacobs reflects on his four decades in South African politics and explores how Zohran Mamdani's Mayoral run could reignite hope and transform local governance in Cape Town ahead of the 2026 elections.
Image: Madison Stewart / Zohran Mamdani Website
I have spent almost four decades in the trenches of South African politics, organising high school youth in the Cape Flats, standing on protest lines during apartheid, political detention, post-Apartheid developmental bureaucrat, party secretary , negotiating hope in Parliament, and now walking the reflective road of reinvention. Politics, for me, has always been about people. About how we show up, serve, and struggle with and for our communities.
We are both tired and jaded by the current political theatre, where power often speaks louder than principle, so when I read about a young man of African descent born in New York, shaped in Kampala, and partly schooled in Cape Town has reignited hope in the transformative potential of local government. I saw a mirror. A message. A movement that speaks to what we must become again, here in South Africa, especially in Cape Town building up to our 2026 Local Government Elections.
His name is Zohran Kwame Mamdani, and though he has not yet won the general election, his recent victory in the Democratic primary for New York City Mayor has captured global attention.
It is a victory not just of a candidate, but of a political method rooted in service, authenticity, and daily struggle. And for those of us committed to rebuilding faith in public leadership in Cape Town and across South Africa, Mamdani offers something we've been desperate for: a living example of how to campaign, organise, and inspire from below. His story tells us that people are hungry for leaders who fight for their daily lives not for their careers. It tells us that politics is not dead, trust is. And trust is rebuilt not through slogans, but through presence, performance, and principle
But what few South Africans may realise is that Mamdani's story is not just a global one it is deeply interwoven with Cape Town itself.
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Cape Town Roots, Global Reach
Zohran Mamdani's father is the renowned Ugandan intellectual Professor Mahmood Mamdani, who in the mid-1990s attempted to spearhead a project of intellectual transformation at the University of Cape Town. His effort bold, uncomfortable, and uncompromising was met with such resistance by the university's conservative establishment that it became known in South African academic circles as the "Mamdani Affair". 'The Good Muslim, Bad Muslim' is a must read authored by the Prof.
At the time, Zohran was just a young boy, but his family's political courage would shape him. He spent three formative years as a pupil at St George's Grammar School in Little Mowbray between 1996 and 1998 an elite, co-educational school whose motto is Virtute et Valore ('The courage to do what is right').
Now, nearly 30 years later, that motto echoes back across the Atlantic as Zohran attempts to become one of the most progressive mayors in the history of New York City. And we here in Cape Town must pay close attention not because he is one of ours, but because his victory strategy has lessons we urgently need to learn.
To us outsiders, New York City may appear as a distant, complex metropolis a cultural capital, a business hub, a symbol of American diversity and dysfunction. But the mayor of New York is not just a municipal executive; it's one of the most powerful local government roles in the world, with jurisdiction over more than 8 million residents, a $110 billion+ annual budget, and responsibilities that touch everything from housing to policing to the subway system
The Strategy: Politics of the Ground, Not the Grandstand
Unlike the polished centrist campaigns that dominate city elections in the U.S., Mamdani's approach was unapologetically pro people and working-class:
• His message focused on bread-and-butter issues: freezing rent, making public transport free and efficient, universal childcare, and public housing.
• His volunteer team, over 22,000 strong, knocked on more than 450,000 doors, primarily in low-income and immigrant communities.
• He rejected corporate money and instead built a campaign through small-dollar donationsand people-powered logistics.
• He communicated across multiple platforms from TikTok explainers on rent control to Instagram reels walking through neglected housing blocks.
This wasn't just a campaign it was a civic mobilisation, fusing protest energy with policy clarity. It didn't rely on nostalgia or abstract ideology. It spoke to people's present pain with dignity, and to their aspirations with substance. This reminds me of the 80's slogan : Peoples Action for Peoples Power. He facilitates ordinary peoples agency. His campaign has created political energy in a disengaged electorate that has translated into stronger civic participation. Today the City of Cape Town passes a budget that does not speak to, or represent us.
A Mirror for Cape Town: Inequality and the Crisis of Representation
Cape Town is not New York. But both cities are profoundly unequal, shaped by histories of racial division, gentrification, and spatial injustice. From the Bronx to Bonteheuwel, the thread of exclusion runs deep.
In our city, the Democratic Alliance governs with technical efficiency but moral detachment. It delivers excellent services to a few , but deepens apartheid spatial patterns. It enforces bylaws that criminalise poverty. It pushes market-based solutions where social investment is needed. And crucially, it represents an elite version of governance, not a democratic one.
Here in Cape Town, our poor and working-class communities face the same structural burdens like New York:
• Rising food prices and transport costs. Unaffordable electricity, rates and tariffs. Cap electricity tariffs for indigent households;
• Homelessness, Unaffordable Housing , gentrification, Informal evictions and backyarder neglect;
• Water cuts in the poorest wards, while swimming pools in affluent suburbs stay blue. Stop water disconnections;
• Violence in vulnerable community, Children and Women are unsafe, Poverty and Despair.
How do we build trust again, not just structures? How do we shift from gatekeeping to grassroots mobilisation?
Mamdani's success shows that political renewal begins with three fundamentals:
1. Be Tangible and Tactical
Cape Town residents don't want vague promises. We want a City:
• That works and cares for all of us;
• That create safe and secure communities for all of us;
• That create decent jobs and opportunities for all of us;
• That provides affordable housing, accommodation and basic service for all of us;
• That provides affordable rates and service for all of us;
• That provides safe reliable affordable public transport;
• That provides affordable Early Children Development Centre (crèches);
• Councillors who show up, not just show off.
Let us train a new generation of councillor candidates who know how to run a ward before they run for office. Let every candidate start with a local manifesto of action fixing five things in their area before the election even arrives.
2. Rebuild the Culture of Organising
We must stop complaining, start mobilising and organising. Let's take back and reclaim 'Peoples People through United Peoples Action'. We must stop behaving like a marketing agency and start behaving like a movement again.
We must:
• Identify and train 100's of youth per sub council, per ward, per VD to become digital and street organisers;
• Create, build and maintain neighbourhood watch committees, sanitation brigades, and food solidarity networks;
• Use tools like WhatsApp, Google Sheets, and TikTok to track delivery failures, communicate events, and campaign at scale.
Like Mamdani, we must knock on thousands of doors not just during voter registration drives, but as a permanent feature of our presence.
3. Have the Courage to Confront Power
Mamdani didn't shy away from controversy. He supports Gaza. He marched with delivery and taxi drivers. He challenged corporate landlords. Just like him we must fight injustice here.
Too many local politicians in South Africa try to appease everyone. In the process, they stand for no one.
We must develop the political maturity to say:
• Yes to land redistribution;
• No to water and electricity disconnections for the poor;
• Yes to universal early childhood development and free sanitation;
• No to public-private partnerships that exclude communities.
Being a public servant must be just that a servant, not a careerist or contractor.
Cape Town Can Lead the New Politics
If We're Willing to Change
Cape Town was once a cradle of radical thought and transformation. It still can be if we dare to imagine and organise differently.
If Zohran Mamdani, shaped partly in our city, can emerge as a champion of grassroots power in the belly of U.S. capitalism, then what excuse do we have?
He is not perfect. He has not yet won the mayoralty. But he has already shown us how to bring people back into the political process, not as passive voters but as active builders of their communities.
As the school principal of St George's Grammar said in wishing him well, 'The courage to do what is right.' That courage must now guide us too.
A Call to Action: Toward a People's Local Government Campaign for 2026
Let me be clear: the 2026 Local Government Elections may be the last chance for progressive politics in South Africa to rebuild its base.
To do this, we need:
• A People's Candidate School to train servant-leaders across all provinces.
• A Ward Delivery Tracker to help communities hold councillors accountable.
• A Digital Organising Corps to counter misinformation, amplify our wins, and tell new stories.
• And above all, a radical return to the people their streets, their struggles, their voices.
Let us in Cape Town not look back in 2026 and wonder what went wrong. Let us look forward now, build boldly, and act with integrity.
Let us not only honour Mamdani the candidate but rekindle the revolutionary fire that Cape Town once gave the world.
From Astoria to Athlone, the call is clear.
Organise. Deliver. Transform.
* Faiez Jacobs is a former Member of Parliament, founder of The Transcendence Group, Capetonian, Activist, and Servant of the People.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.
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