* Helen Zille’s DA campaign team attended an ANC manifesto launch in Diepsloot, sparking accusations of “political espionage” from the ANC.
* The DA defended its team’s presence, claiming it was to gather “newsworthy” content and highlight the ANC’s alleged failures.
* The IEC’s Electoral Code of Conduct does not prohibit attending opponents’ rallies, making the DA’s presence legally permissible.
When the DA’s mayoral candidate for the City of Johannesburg, Helen Zille, posted on X about the chaos at the ANC’s mayoral candidate announcement, which ultimately did not happen, several people online asked whether she had actually attended the Sandton event.
A day later, on Sunday, Zille’s social media campaign team was spotted at the ANC’s manifesto launch at Riverside, Diepsloot.
News24 has seen an image of two members of the social media team, Tami Jackson and Zeke Wareley, capturing content among the crowd, with Wareley wearing an ANC T-shirt.
Jackson is the digital strategist and mastermind behind Zille’s viral social media campaign for the Johannesburg mayoral race, and Wareley works alongside her.
The team’s attendance at an ANC event adds a new layer to the 4 November election campaign, already classified as a high-stakes contest.
In its initial stages, Zille’s campaign made great use of social media before later moving on to community meetings and engagement with different sectors, including the business and professional sectors.
The social media campaign mostly highlighted governance failures in the City of Johannesburg. For the campaign, Zille has swum, canoed in potholes and ziplined over sinkholes.
It now appears that the next phase of Zille’s campaign could include going undercover at the DA’s opponents’ rallies.
The ANC has described the act as “political espionage”.
“It’s spying,” ANC spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu told News24 on Monday.
She said she had no prior knowledge of the matter before News24 approached her for comment.
Bhengu said:
I personally, as a spokesperson, did not know. It’s political espionage, it’s also unethical. It’s devoid of ethics.
She added that the ANC would look into the matter and “study” it.
Kyle Jacobs, who serves as media liaison for the DA Johannesburg mayoral campaign team, said the two had attended the event to gather newsworthy material, “for the same reason that News24 was there”.
Asked what the team had hoped to achieve and what they had found, Jacobs said it was “newsworthy, amusing and ironic”.
“Showcasing the ANC’s hypocrisy and falsehoods, such as promising to fix in 100 days what it took them 30 years to destroy,” Jacobs said:
He rejected the ANC’s characterisation of their actions as “political espionage”.
“Nowhere did the ANC say that this rally was for supporters only. Indeed, as we saw, they were desperate to get more people there to boost attendance,” he said.
He said the two being at the rally helped raise the event’s attendance numbers.
“The start was delayed by hours while they waited for more buses, and they even started packing up empty chairs from the back of the venue to hide the hundreds of empty seats.
“We lent a helping hand to solve their attendance problem, just as we help to clear up the ANC’s mess in Joburg,” Jacobs said, adding that they would “of course” attend more ANC events in the lead up to the 4 November election.
“The ANC gives us the middle finger. We return the compliment,” Jacobs said in reference to an incident during the final registration weekend wherein an elderly man in an ANC T-shirt gave the DA the middle finger.
Zille’s team has since posted videos on social media captured from the ANC’s manifesto launch.
While the DA had not infiltrated the ANC, this is not the first time the party has been caught napping while its opponents deployed undercover tactics. The ANC suffered massive blows in the 2024 local government election, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal, where some of its members would encourage people to vote for the MK Party while wearing ANC T-shirts.
The Electoral Commission of South Africa’s (IEC) Electoral Code of Conduct targets traditional campaign malpractices, intimidation, bribery and the spread of election disinformation and AI-generated deepfakes.
There is, however, no specific rule that bans a political party from physically attending an opponent’s rally. Members of any party are free to travel to and attend any public meetings.
In the coming weeks, political parties will sign a code of conduct specifically for the upcoming election.
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