The outrage currently being directed at Xolani Khumalo by the EFF says far more about the state of South African politics than it does about his suitability to lead Ekurhuleni. In the aftermath of a deadly anti-drug operation in which a suspected drug dealer was shot and killed, the EFF has rushed to frame Khumalo as “unfit for office”reducing him to a mere “drug buster” who supposedly lacks political credibility.
This line of attack is not only intellectually lazy, it is politically dishonest. At the heart of this controversy lies a deeper and more uncomfortable truth: South Africa’s political class has become so accustomed to passivity, bureaucratic inertia and moral cowardice that decisive action is now treated as a liability rather than a virtue. In communities ravaged by drugs, gangsterism and organised crime, Khumalo’s visibility in confronting these realities is precisely what has made him politically relevant.
The EFF’s argument assumes that leadership is defined by ideological rhetoric and parliamentary theatrics, rather than by proximity to real social problems. But politics is not a debating society. It is a tool for governance. And governance, at its most basic level, begins with safety.
Ekurhuleni is not an abstract policy playground. It is a region where drugs are openly traded, where young people are trapped in cycles of addiction, and where communities routinely complain that police either cannot or will not intervene. In this context, dismissing crime-fighting as somehow beneath political leadership is not just tone-deaf… it is offensive.
What Khumalo represents is a break from the professional political class that governs from press conferences and blue-light convoys. His political capital is rooted in lived experience: confronting criminal networks, engaging directly with communities, and exposing the everyday realities that politicians prefer to outsource to slogans.
The irony is that the same political establishment now attacking him has, for years, failed to protect the very communities they claim to represent. Under their watch, drug syndicates have flourished, informal settlements have become recruitment grounds for criminal economies, and young people have been left with few alternatives beyond despair.
Against that backdrop, Khumalo’s crime-focused profile is not a weakness, it is a qualification. The EFF’s claim that he is “not a politician” reveals a deeper fear: that politics itself might be changing. That voters are no longer satisfied with ideological purity tests and revolutionary branding, but want visible outcomes. They want fewer speeches and more action. Fewer manifestos and more accountability.
ActionSA’s decision to field Khumalo as a mayoral candidate reflects this shift. It signals a recognition that urban governance in South Africa has entered a new phase one where security, service delivery and local accountability are no longer secondary issues, but the central political terrain.
Critically, none of the EFF’s attacks engage with the legal or operational facts of the incident itself. There has been no finding that Khumalo acted unlawfully. No court ruling. No official misconduct determination. What exists instead is a political narrative constructed in advance of any formal process a familiar tactic in South African discourse, where moral outrage often replaces evidence.This is not principled accountability. It is pre-emptive character assassination.
The broader danger of this approach is that it sends a chilling message to any leader willing to confront entrenched criminality: that political ambition requires silence, distance and plausible deniability. That leadership must remain safely detached from the consequences of violence, poverty and social decay.
But communities do not live in that abstraction. They live with the consequences every day.If Khumalo is being judged by the standards of elite political culture, then yes he is an outsider. But if he is judged by the standards of communities desperate for safety, stability and visible leadership, then he is arguably one of the most politically authentic figures currently in local politics.
The EFF’s framing also exposes a contradiction at the heart of radical political rhetoric. For years, they have claimed to stand with “the people” against crime, corruption and state failure. Yet when a leader emerges whose political identity is built around confronting precisely those realities, he is dismissed as unfit for office.This is not ideological consistency. It is political opportunism.
Ultimately, the question is not whether Xolani Khumalo fits the traditional mould of a mayor. The real question is whether that mould has failed South Africans so completely that it needs to be broken.
Ekurhuleni does not need another career politician fluent in press statements and policy jargon. It needs leadership that understands, viscerally, the cost of crime and the urgency of intervention. It needs a mayor who is willing to be unpopular with criminals before being comfortable with political elites.
In that sense, the EFF’s attacks may have achieved the opposite of their intended effect. By trying to discredit Khumalo for confronting drugs and criminal networks, they have inadvertently confirmed exactly why many voters see him as credible.
In a country where politics has too often become theatre, Xolani Khumalo represents something dangerously rare: a leader whose political identity is grounded in action rather than abstraction. And that may be precisely why he is being attacked.
