Rise Mzansi's Lukhona Mnguni defends untested party pitch for Johannesburg
The party's Johannesburg figure argues that experience should be measured by vision rather than years in office, pointing to Cape Town's first DA-run administration as his example.
Rise Mzansi’s Lukhona Mnguni has pushed back at the charge that his party is too new to be trusted with Johannesburg’s municipal budget, arguing that experience should be judged on vision and delivery rather than time in office.
Mnguni was speaking to eNCA about the party’s vision for Johannesburg, in an interview published by the channel on 20 September 2026. The question put to him was blunt: why should residents hand Africa’s largest municipal budget to an untested party?
His answer was that “untested” is relative. He pointed to Cape Town, noting that Helen Zille had never governed a municipality before the DA took over the city. He contrasted that with the ANC’s 32 years of local government experience, which he described as experience of breakage.
Mnguni asked what kind of experience is being demanded when, in his words, the streets are broken, the lights are dark and residents are not safe.
For him the test is not tenure. It is the vision a party brings. He said Rise Mzansi’s argument is that seriously minded people have moved away from politics, and that the party’s project is to bring those new leaders back in.
He offered two examples from provincial government to support the claim that inexperience at the ballot box does not mean incompetence in office. He noted that the chairperson of the standing committee on public accounts had not run such a committee before taking the role, and asked whether that person is running it competently now. He also cited the MEC for economic development, saying that she arrived to find a forensic report, fired the gambling board chief executive and suspended the chief financial officer, and is turning the gambling board around. Mnguni described the board as an important source of provincial revenue and said the MEC is being intolerant of corruption.
His closing point was that Rise Mzansi is not only about potholes and street lights. The party, he said, is offering a vision for the future and for jobs, and the job at hand needs more than fixing potholes.
Source: eNCA (YouTube), Rise Mzansi’s Lukhona Mnguni on the Party’s Vision for Johannesburg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppVg-PGSiSY)
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