DA fields Uncle Cedric in Cape Town ward as parties sign up online names

Cedric Laguma, the Cape Town personality behind the Facebook page Uncle Cedric’s House, is standing as a Democratic Alliance ward councillor candidate in the metro, one of a run of well-known local names entering politics before the November municipal elections.

As IOL reported on 16 September, the party has defended the selection against suggestions that it is recruiting reach rather than ability, and its metro chairperson, JP Smith, has set out how the candidates were chosen.

How the DA says it picked its candidates

Smith said the party advertised ward councillor positions from early 2024, inside its own ranks and in civil society, and that applicants had their suitability checked before a multi-stage selection process. That process, he said, included an assessment of principles, knowledge of local government and policy making. Candidates appeared before interview panels and were evaluated by the party’s Federal Executive.

“These candidates were not selected purely because they are influencers,” Smith told IOL. He said the party’s process is more rigorous than that of any other party, and that those who came through it had the core skills needed to be effective councillors. Training and development for new councillors is in place, he said.

Smith also said social media has become an important source of news and a channel for campaigning and speaking to voters, while rejecting the idea that online popularity on its own secures a candidacy.

The other names on the ballot

Laguma is not the only recognisable Cape figure moving into local politics. Earlier in September, the Patriotic Movement of the Cape appointed Ready D, the DJ, broadcaster and founding member of Prophets of da City, whose real name is Deon Daniels, as its mayoral candidate. The same party named Bradley Bruintjies, a social media personality and community figure from the Cape Flats known as Die Hoender Man, as a ward councillor candidate.

Taken together, the three selections have set off a public argument about whether a following online translates into the work of a ward councillor, which in Cape Town means sitting on a subcouncil, holding a municipal department to its service standards and answering residents about water, refuse, electricity and planning. The criticism has been aimed at parties rather than at the individuals, and the charge is that they are chasing attention.

What a ward councillor actually does

The argument matters because the job is administrative rather than performative. A ward councillor is the resident’s first point of contact with the City of Cape Town. The work is a fault logged with the electricity department, a blocked stormwater drain before winter, a rezoning application that a street wants to oppose, a budget line that decides whether a clinic or a library gets staff. It is committee work, it is reading council agendas, and it is being available on a Saturday morning when a constituent’s meter has been cut.

None of that is settled by how many people watch a video.

It is also a job with a track record to defend. The City of Cape Town has held a clean audit outcome from the Auditor-General in recent financial years, and its draft budget runs into tens of billions of rand. Whoever takes a seat in the council chamber inherits a municipality that is largely working and a set of expectations that come with it. Voters in a ward with a functioning library and a broken street light are not making a broad judgment about the country. They are making a judgment about whether the person they elected answers the phone.

Where this leaves the voter

The municipal elections are due in November. Candidate lists are being assembled now, and the parties are putting names in front of voters who will decide on service delivery in their own street.

The test the DA has set itself, on Smith’s account, is that the selection process sorts ability from fame. The test the voter sets is simpler, and it arrives when the first complaint goes unanswered.

Source: IOL, JP Smith defends DA’s influencer candidate in Cape Town election race, 16 September 2026.