The Gathering 2026: Lion and mosquito: The spirit Daily Maverick brings to SA’s collapsing cities

Good morning and welcome to all present – those in the room with us and the many more watching online. 

2026 marks the 18th year since our newsroom wrote the very first Daily Maverick story. Since then, much has changed in our world, but the vision and values of Daily Maverick have never wavered.

Daily Maverick’s existential purpose is to bring the truth to light and to defend it with everything in us. 

We do this for one fundamental reason: to benefit society. 

Our commitment is to do this with integrity, courage and a fierce independence despite the threats we face or the shifting contexts we are operating in. 

Today’s gathering is an important ritual. It serves as a collective learning space for us all. It is an opportunity for the diagnosis of complexities that threaten the wellbeing of our society. And it allows us to formulate solutions that might resolve those challenges. We call it Live Journalism.

In 2004 Madiba once blessed Johannesburg with the words: “May the people of this City prosper. And may it go well with all our people.”

While Shakespeare said: “What is a city but the people?” 

Both of them understood that cities organise human life. Cities are hubs for trade, services, culture, education and connection.  

In cities, families paint the stories of their lives. People, particularly the vulnerable, find shelter, support and meaning in cities and towns. 

When our cities thrive, our nation thrives

When our cities thrive, our nation thrives. Neglect them and you neglect our collective humanity. Corrupt and bomb a city and you doom the nation (and particularly the vulnerable) to suffer profoundly. 

We are one of 52 countries in Africa and almost 200 in the world. We exist during a time of change, great uncertainty and continuous threats of global violence and the erosion of human rights. 

As a country, we defiantly punch above our weight in many spheres. 

But, we have to ensure the sustainable health, safety and prosperity of our own cities and towns if we wish to have any chance at having continued and increasing influence in the wider world.

We hope that today’s gathering will bring attention to the fact that a significant, immediate and sustained correction of course is now desperately needed in cities and towns across South Africa.  

Whilst there is much evidence of amazing work being done, there is unfortunately evidence of shameful neglect, widespread corruption and the near collapse in parts of many cities and towns.  

Every day, millions of residents wake up not knowing if they will have water, electricity, refuse collection, emergency services, drivable street surfaces and functional traffic lights. Those who can are paying extra to companies who supply services that the municipality fails to deliver. Not a single metro in our country (and there are eight) achieved a clean audit in the 2024/25 financial year.

A sustainable correction needs⁠ every sector of society to do their best. 

Government leaders and business leaders must govern and lead well and transparently, in the interest of society and with accountability. 

Civil society organisations must be prominent players and be afforded a proper platform to participate rather than be seen as the enemy. 

Ordinary citizens must be actively engaged in their communities. This year, residents can do one more and very powerful thing – make your vote count in the local government election on 4 November.

And what role must the media and specifically Daily Maverick play? 

We must empower you with credible information that serves you. We must shine the light on what works in our cities and towns and where things are failing. 

On receiving the Nobel Prize for literature in 1991 the novelist and activist Nadine Gordimer wrote:  “The writer must take the right to explore, warts and all, both the enemy and the beloved comrade in arms, since only a try for the truth makes sense of being, only a try for the truth edges towards justice.”

Challenging both enemy and allies

At Daily Maverick our journalists honour that right to explore, to investigate, even when it means challenging both enemy and allies so that we can arrive at a try for the truth. Because to light up the truth enables justice. That is our duty.

Away from today’s spotlight, Daily Maverick journalists show up in communities and report the actual lived experiences of residents throughout the year, no matter who is in power there. 

In Johannesburg, we have highlighted how municipal documents are being left to rot in the abandoned Metro Centre in Braamfontein. 

In Gqeberha, the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro acted within 24 hours, promising streetlight repairs and more security after a series of stories highlighted the deteriorating state of the beachfront. 

In Cape Town, we have put the Municipal Planning Tribunal under the spotlight by asking how billions of rands’ worth of land-use decisions are being made. 

The same scrutiny applies for the DA-run City of Cape Town as for the ANC-led coalition in eThekwini and the revolving door of mayors in Johannesburg. 

Our journalists are the heart and backbone of our work. They bring a deep and personal commitment of social justice to their work. 

When they craft a story about how communities deserve security and safety, they do so because they have suffered a lack of it. 

When they get worked up about the lack of educational opportunity in poverty-stricken areas it is because they had to overcome just such a world to get to where they are now. 

When they question the services of municipalities in remote villages they do it because it is their ancestral home and where some of their families continue to live. 

When they hold politicians to account and demand transparency it is because they survived the brutal side of apartheid-era Johannesburg and can still see – and fight for – the beauty of this impossible, chaotic city, and its right to become everything it should be. 

Tragically in the last few months, we lost just such a journalist.  One of our own.

In August, Estelle Ellis passed away. 

You know her work well – the pothole she wouldn't stop writing about. The hospital ward she wouldn't stop visiting. The broken promise she wouldn’t let a municipality quietly walk away from. When a water pump was “lost” by a municipality, she found it! 

‘Mosquito-Lion’

Estelle described the spirit a journalist needs as a “Mosquito-Lion” – part lion defending the powerless and part mosquito, pestering the powerful until they cannot ignore you any longer. She certainly had the spirit. 

We miss her deeply and we salute her and all Daily Maverick’s staff for their brave hearts and consistent work. 

The work is a calling and the wider team at Daily Maverick, many whose names you will never hear, are all extraordinarily committed to upholding the mission that is at the heart and the art of journalism. 

Underpinning this work are our more than 30,000 Maverick Insiders who are a force that is actively involved and doing good. We thank you for your activism in keeping Daily Maverick alive. 

We thank the foundations and donor organisations whose donations unlock our ability to do this work. 

And we thank those commercial advertisers who see the value of professional media like Daily Maverick for their brands and society as a whole.

Over the last month or so we have been in the midst of the “Greatest Rivalry” series in rugby. 

Rugby lover or not, it is hard to deny the spectacular magic of our nation when we come together. 

Our beautiful positivity comes alive in the stadiums, in bars and restaurants, in homes where friends gather and on social media platforms. It is a spirit that is powered by our diversity, our collective courage and our shared humanity. 

How brilliant it would be to direct that spirit to our cities and towns. 

It is that same spirit that propels the Daily Maverick team, no matter what. 

It is the spirit that makes magic happen.

And in that spirit I welcome you to the Gathering Cities Edition.