Zandile Hlophe-Mkhwanazi

She co-founded and leads GirlCode, a non-profit teaching technology to women and girls. The uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party named her its eThekwini mayoral candidate in August 2026 and removed her from that role in September 2026, before the 4 November 2026 municipal election.

Career

Daily Maverick describes her as co-founder and chief executive of GirlCode, a non-profit that advances tech education for women and girls, and as holding a BSc Honours in Computational and Applied Mathematics. It called her the lesser-known choice among the candidates the MK Party fielded in the metros. EWN reported on 10 September 2026 that the party had removed her as eThekwini mayoral candidate and fired her from its national party liaison committee, two weeks after announcing her. The party made the announcement after members protested over the councillor list submitted to the electoral commission.

Positions

Daily Maverick lists her campaign promises as fixing water shortages, sewage spills and power failures, tackling the housing shortage and reclaiming hijacked buildings, and acting decisively to make the municipality safer. Wikipedia places the MK Party economically on the left to far-left, a placing it describes as disputed, and socially on the right.

Summarised automatically from the linked sources. Daily Maverick · EWN · Wikipedia (MK Party)