Khumalo vows to shut Ekurhuleni drug dens and take back the streets from dealers

Residents of Ekurhuleni who have watched drug houses take hold of their streets now have a mayoral candidate saying out loud that he will close them. Xolani Khumalo, standing for ActionSA in the metro, pledged at the weekend to shut down drug dens, break up the networks that supply them and give communities back to the people who live in them.

He made the promise at his party’s closing campaign event in Hillbrow, Johannesburg, where he set out five commitments he would carry into the mayor’s office. The drug trade came first. Khumalo said he would wipe it off the streets of Ekurhuleni.

For families in the metro, that is the demand they have been making for years. Drug houses sit in residential streets. Dealers work in the open. Parents say they cannot keep their children away from what is sold a few doors down, and communities say the police response has not matched what they are living with. Khumalo put that condition at the centre of his campaign close.

He told the crowd he did not enter politics to win friends. He said he came into it to fight criminals, and that he has gone into drug dens in Ekurhuleni himself. He said he has faced dealers directly while, in his account, law enforcement stood by. He told supporters he knows what a broken city looks like.

He described Ekurhuleni as a crime scene and said that as a crime fighter he is ready to repair it and put the law back in charge.

The remaining pledges reach the machinery of the metro. Khumalo said he would reform the Ekurhuleni Metro Police Department, restore service delivery, fight corruption and cadre deployment, and improve safety across communities. Those commitments speak to residents who deal daily with the metro police and with services that do not arrive.

Herman Mashaba, the ActionSA leader, posted Khumalo’s words as the candidate signed his 2026 election pledge, tagging the party’s Sizokthola slogan and its Gauteng campaign line. The party is putting the anti-crime argument at the front of its pitch to Ekurhuleni voters.

What the campaign has not yet set out is how the pledges would be carried out. The source material carries no detail on how dens would be identified and closed, how supply networks would be dismantled, what the metro police reform would involve, or what the plans would cost. Voters weighing the promises will want those answers before they mark a ballot.

What is not in doubt is the demand Khumalo is answering. Residents of Ekurhuleni have carried the cost of the drug trade in their own streets, and they have asked for enforcement that reaches the houses and the people running them. A candidate who says he will deliver that is speaking to a real and documented condition in the metro.

The Enquirer will follow the campaign through to election day and test each pledge against what the candidates put on the record.

Source: SABC News, Xolani Khumalo pledges to eradicate drugs in Ekurhuleni