Helen Zille Dances at Gusheshes and Speaks Xhosa — But Voters Ask One Hard Question

Helen Zille was spotted busting moves at a township taxi rank in the Western Cape on Tuesday, and the internet has not stopped talking about it. The DA Federal Council Chairperson threw her arms wide and swayed to the beat of an ibhasi crowd while greeting locals in fluent Xhosa, with cameras rolling the whole time.

Zille has been touring working-class neighbourhoods this week as part of a voter drive ahead of local by-elections. She gave speeches partly in isiXhosa and posted a thank-you message in the same language for supporters who showed up. Sources close to the DA trip say she prepared those Xhosa phrases specifically for this leg of the campaign.

DA Western Cape spokesperson Refiloe Nt’sekhe says the outreach shows the party is serious about speaking to people in their own languages. He added that Zille practised the greetings with native speakers beforehand. The ANC provincial office was not impressed. Spokesperson Mxolisi Dukwana called it a show put on for votes, saying it was borrowing culture for election gain and had nothing to do with real connection with struggling households.

Zille’s past is a big part of this story. Her 2017 tweets comparing apartheid infrastructure to colonialism sparked huge backlash and cost her the DA leadership role. Later comments about coloured identity and Cape independence added to the damage. Many Xhosa-speaking communities still don’t fully trust her, and DA strategists have been trying to win that back for almost ten years.

The clip that spread fastest is the one nobody can really brush off. It shows an elderly white woman in sensible shoes stomping and shuffling in something close to a proper indlamu dance, while a teenage boy in a Kaizer Chiefs cap bent over laughing beside her, then clapped along anyway. The thirty-second video blew up on WhatsApp groups from Khayelitsha to Mthatha within hours, and people were split between laughing at it, cheering for it, and arguing about it non-stop.

It is still unclear whether any of this will change a single vote. The residents who cheered that day are still dealing with load-shedding, unemployment and housing backlogs. So the big question is whether a dance and a few Xhosa phrases can count for more than actual service delivery when election day comes.

So what do you think? Is Zille’s dance and Xhosa effort a genuine step towards winning trust, or just a clever election stunt? Drop your verdict in the comments and tag someone from the Cape who has already seen the video.

https://x.com/i/status/2119284614057594938

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