Quinton Mtyala
WHEN it comes to politics and serving his community, the ANC’s Cape Town mayoral candidate, Xolani Sotashe, said he is no “Johnny-come-lately” and aims to wrestle the mayoral chain away from the DA’s Patricia de Lille.
Sotashe, 44, was announced at the weekend as the ANC’s mayoral candidate in Cape Town for the August 3 local government elections. The metro is the only one not governed by the ANC.
Sotashe has been a councillor since December 2000 when the metro was formed.
His mother is from Mfuleni, outside Kuils River, but he spent his formative years in the then Transkei, where he matriculated before he moved to Cape Town to further his studies.
In Transkei, he was on the student representative council of Ndema Senior Secondary School, where he matriculated, and got involved in student politics at a regional level.
Dreams of further studies had to be deferred on arrival in Cape Town.
Coming from a family of seven children, Sotashe said, he had to get a job first to support himself and his siblings.
“I studied at Boland College, later at Helderberg and also did some courses at UCT through the Development Action Group.”
He eventually got a job with Agfa Photo Fast and developed a passion for photojournalism while also becoming involved in party politics.
“During the day I would go to school, come back and work at night, and also get involved in politics.”
His activism would see him become involved in the then South East (Strand, Somerset West and Khayelitsha) region of the ANC, before it eventually became part of the Dullah Omar region to represent the whole of the Cape Town metro.
Sotashe admits that when he was elected as a ward councillor in December 2000, he knew nothing about the nuts and bolts of local government, but had the privilege of serving with stalwarts, who took him under their wing and guided him.
“There were very few young people in council. We were not more than four, but they told me in my face that ‘we’re going to throw you in the deep end, you will swim and find your way out’.”
He served in several portfolio committees and in 2011 became the ANC’s chief whip in council, and also chairperson of subcouncil 24, which he said spearheaded several developments in Khayelitsha and Strand.
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