Rob Haniff Medium 2026 Is Make or Break

Every election, people say it's make or break. This is it, the last chance saloon. I mean, I've been guilty of doing that. But if there ever was a time to swing the key metros in South Africa towards competence, organisation, proper management, and decency and honesty, DA, it is now.

Now is the time.

All of the big 5 metros that are not DA can swing DA. You have We have 2 full years to show the DA can deliver.

If not now, when?

So your initial day 1, put a proper management team in place.

Yes.

Day 2, fix water and sewage.

Yes.

What's day 3?

Day 3 is to clean out the corruption because we cannot continue in this trajectory for another 5 years with the people who brought us here.

And you know who they are.

We know who they are.

Yeah.

So we're not going to allow people who have stolen our money to get away with it. Good for you. That is the one promise I can make to the people of our city. If we know of people who have stolen money, criminals don't belong in government, they belong in jail. And that's exactly where they're going to go. We're not going to take that nonsense, Rob, because it has to come to an end. People deserve much better in Durban.

Jordan Hill Nurse has made a big difference here with his Metro Police. Yes, loophole on having a Metro Police. Yeah, because of the failure of SAPS. Will you be able to implement something like that?

We do have a Metro Police. Unfortunately, it's not as well run as what you have here in City of Cape Town. Management is a problem.

Okay.

It was a very interesting video that was online the other day where a courier company was getting robbed and the Metro Police drives right past it, looks around, does nothing, and moves on. That's the quality of police we have in the city.

Oh, don't tell me that.

We have cameras that are all over the city that's not working. So over a period of time in that city, I think our city residents have lost hope in the Metro Police's ability to actually keep our community safe. That's sad.

We need to turn that around. We lost hope in SAPS, but to lose hope in the Metro Police is a lot.

We need to turn that around. And there's some great men and women working in that service, amazing people. Who speak to me all the time and say, we've just lost hope because our senior leadership is the problem. So there are policemen and women who want to make a meaningful contribution to keeping our community safe. Let me give you an example. So police a few years ago conducted a raid on taxis who have not been paying their fines and impounded those vehicles. And so the taxi owners marched to the city hall put the mayor under pressure, Sandile Gumede, and she issued the instructions, as I'm told, to release those vehicles. So what does that do to the morale of the police when they work so hard to enforce the law, and then you have the politicians saying apply a different rule in this case? And so those are the incidents that actually kill the morale of the police who actually want to do a good job, because policemen and women know that that field is a calling, and they prepare to give their lives for it. But you have to have a political leadership that gives them the requisite support.

So you've now got a 12-month campaign in place. Are you full-time on this?

Full-time, every day, Monday to Sunday, 7 days a week. But it's worth fighting for, Rob.

It is worth fighting for.

It's really worth fighting for. I had to send my child to study in Dubai because there's no opportunities here. And so many other thousands of families have to do the same thing. No, it doesn't have to be that way.

Tell me about your family. You married?

I'm married. I have two lovely children. My son is also just married recently. Congratulations. Thank you. And my daughter is studying architecture in Dubai and I'm waiting to bring my baby back home. So if I can just— And where does your son live? My son's not too far away from me in Morningside in Durban. Yeah. And he's—

I grew up in Morningside, Johannesburg. So he's good.

And so he's in the education sector and he's teaching. Maths and science.

And give me a little bit of a background. You were born in Durban?

I was a Durban boy all my life.

Sharks fan?

Sharks fan all my life. Loved Durban, spent all my life there. I schooled in Durban, was a councillor there, was a member of parliament also representing KZN down here at— in parliament, um, for almost 17 years.

And you had mostly a political life?

Yeah, all my life. Yeah, all my entire life, been actively involved From 1994 elections, nonstop, every single day.

What does your beloved wife do?

My wife Sharon runs some online businesses. She used to be a member of parliament as well, at the provincial legislature and a councillor. But the two of us decided to go on early retirement and then the DA calls you back in service. So good for you. Back again.

How old are you?

I'm 52.

I'm 65.

You're the bigger than I am.

I'm the old man in the room.

Yeah.

And tell me about a little bit about you. Do you collect anything? Do you have any hobbies?

I love anything outdoor.

You are—

I love fishing. I love the beach. I'm on the beach every single morning. My apartment's on the beachfront, and so that's where you'll find me every single morning.

My cousin Mark Taylor lives there and he surfs every day, so I'm sure you guys are beautiful past each other.

It's, it's such a beautiful city, and I walk that beachfront every single day dreaming of what it can look like in the future. And I could tell you that there are huge opportunities that we can maximise on. One of those things is just for us to create an investment company as an entity of the city, driven by private sector, supported by local government, and watch how that city will turn around.

Interesting. And which— where would you focus that initial project?

I mean, if you know Durban and its beach, it's our crown jewel.

Yeah, fix the front Fix the beachfront.

Fix the frontline.

Yeah.

I mean, you get cities in the world who are trying to build beaches.

Exactly. You've got it.

And they've got massive development around the beaches. We have it, but we don't have the development around our beaches. And so I have that dream actually, that I want to turn that beachfront area into a gem that's going to make Durban famous to the world.

Safe, secure, beautiful.

Safe, secure, beautiful, state-of-the-art. Then we can start getting the planes back landing in Durban again, the international flights. The tourists have disappeared because of the sewer in the oceans. So if we can get those basics right and fix stuff, fix what's broken first, things will start working on its own.

And the rail, I mean, that highway from Durban to Maritzburg and Joburg, it's, I mean, I drove it a couple of months ago. There were 3 or 4 lanes of which 2 to 3 lanes for trucks all the way back and forward. If you can get the trucks, fewer trucks, more train, open up the highway, I mean, it would be fantastic.

A lot of it has had to do with sabotage.

Yeah.

So there were people sabotaging the lines so that you could get more trucking. And I think that there is a space for both, by the way. Part of the problem is the lack of law enforcement. And that's why people were able to sabotage. And there was sabotage in the water lines as well, because that created an opportunity for the water tanker mafia to get involved. So a lot of it has got to do with not enforcing the law.

Break.

There isn't a culture.

Break so you can steal. That's exactly. ANC's motto, I think.

That's how it's been.

Yeah.

It's created an incentive for criminals to operate. And for as long as there's an opportunity for them to make some money, Things get sabotaged. I mean, I drive around in the city where I see streetlights have been ripped off at the bottom so that people can sell the copper pipes, the copper wire. And again, it's about the lack of enforcement. And you know, people know where these things happen, but I've seen a Metro Police drive past some of these situations. They do nothing about it. So we have to turn that around and get rid of this lawlessness culture that goes on. And I'm very confident we'll be able to fix it. I think people have just had enough of the direction in which we're moving.

You know, it's people like you, extraordinary people like you—

Thank you.

—who commit your lives to saving and fixing the country at a granular level that give me hope that South Africa can make it and be what it deserves to be. And if I look at that horrific national government under apartheid, and then the horrific ANC government under liberation. When are we going to get a government that we really, really want and a government we deserve? And it's people like you. So I really applaud you for what you're doing and your commitment to South Africa. And, you know, we don't want to build any statues. Yeah, but if there were statues, they should be of you and Helen and people like that.

I want to build houses. Honorable statue.

That's the right answer. Lovely.

We've got 600 informal settlements in the city with poor communities living in absolute squalor. I mean, can you imagine the environment those children are growing up in and what kind of a life will they end up leading? The saddest thing of this, Rob, is that those are the people who have been promised and lied to for 30 years. What's even sadder is some of them actually still continue to believe in it. And their lives are not going to change if they're not going to vote for the change that they want to see. That's how life works, and that's what local government's about.

Well, thank you for everything you're doing, and I really, really— you're a national treasure. I applaud you. Thank you. You give me hope.

It's worth the fight.