DA's eThekwini mayoral candidate Haniff Hoosen vows to 'rescue Durban' from corruption, crime and collapse

DA’s newly announced eThekwini mayoral candidate Haniff Hoosen says Durban deserves a government that “works for its people, and not for itself,” promising to restore dignity, services and jobs if elected in 2026.

Speaking at the Havenside Community Hall in Chatsworth on Friday, where DA leader John Steenhuisen formally announced him as the party’s candidate, Hoosen mixed personal memories with a blistering critique of the city’s leadership.

“It is an enormous privilege to lead a movement that is going to bring change to the people of this beautiful city,” he said.

“I accept the nomination as your mayoral candidate for eThekwini for the 2026 local government election.''

He told the crowd he had grown up just streets away from the hall. “It was the people of this community who taught us that if we want to achieve something in life we have to work hard for it because nothing in life comes free and nothing is easy,” he said.

He recalled playing in the parks and “catching little fish in the streams when it was safe to do so.”

Contrasting his own upbringing with nearby Lamontville and Umlazi, Hoosen said: “Some of them didn’t even have a decent toilet or playground. Although we only had basic facilities we had dignity. They did not. This was the society we inherited where inequality fuelled hatred and race sowed division.”

He accused the current administration of abandoning the city’s poorest residents.

“Thousands of families live in about 600 informal settlements in this city. For them, life has not changed because the current government in eThekwini stopped caring for them a long time ago,” he said.

Daily life, he added, “has become a real struggle just to get by” as the cost of living rises, crime soars and opportunities remain dependent on “what their children look like.”

Hoosen said decades of mismanagement and corruption had “torn us apart” and forced “thousands of young, qualified people” to leave Durban, including his own daughter.

“Like all those parents, we too have realised that opportunities here are limited. It is one of the saddest and most difficult things that any parent has to deal with. But it doesn’t have to be this way,” he said.

Pledging to restore basic services, Hoosen promised: “We will get every single wastewater treatment plant working again, stop the sewage crisis in our city once and for all. Infrastructure maintenance and investment will become the single biggest focus in our budget.”

He said “more than half of the water this city receives is leaking into the ground” because pipes are not fixed, yet residents are expected to pay an additional tax “to clean up the mess that they created in the first place.”

“We will ensure that when you open your tap, clean, drinkable water will come out,” he said. “We will revive our beaches so tourists no longer swim in sewer and restore Durban’s reputation as a city people run to, not away from.”

On crime and corruption, he promised to overhaul metro policing and end what he called a culture of patronage.

“When you have a city government that spends millions of rands every year on bodyguards and security to protect themselves, while our children cannot walk safely on the streets, something is seriously wrong with that picture,” Hoosen said.

“Within the first few days of taking over this city, we will start a process to end corruption, and close the taps for those crooks who have been stealing our money.”

“All tenders are open, fair and transparent and when you are awarded a tender in this city, you will have to deliver or else you will find yourself in Westville  Prison,” he warned, adding that the billions saved from corruption would “kickstart small businesses, create jobs, put more police on the streets, build decent houses and bring dignity to people.”

He also promised to recover “more than R35 billion that this city has not bothered to collect” and plough it into fixing pipes and basic services.

Hoosen painted a picture of a divided city “where some of the wealthiest people live in the north, some of the poorest people live in the south, and in between is where all the chaos happens.”

“We have to change that, and I know we can. When I am elected your mayor, it will not matter where you live. It will not matter what you look like. It will not matter what you speak like,'' he said. 

Calling on residents to back the DA, he declared: “Let’s change the direction our city is moving. Let us be the ones who will rewrite the history of this beautiful city. Let’s get behind the DA and rescue the future of all our children.”

hope.ntanzi@iol.co.za

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