Daily Maverick publishes the line-up for The Gathering 2026

CAPE TOWN, 28 August 2026 – Daily Maverick has published the line-up for The Gathering 2026: Cities Edition, in partnership with Ninety One. The event will take place at the Cape Town International Convention Centre on Friday, 11 September and will stream online.

The day is built to answer the definitive questions of the moment, and to send the audience home able to do something with the answers. Are South Africa’s municipalities beyond saving – or is there still a way back, and what would it take.

Writing in Daily Maverick this month, editor-in-chief Jillian Green described the debit orders her Johannesburg suburb now pays for private security, back-up water and solar power. “We have built a shadow municipality out of debit orders for security,” she wrote. The programme takes that experience, which millions of South Africans share, and puts it in front of the people with the power and the evidence to explain it.

More than 30 speakers appear across the day, and the mix is deliberate. Politicians and public officials are on stage with the auditors who examine them and the journalists who report on them. Alongside those are the engineers, water activists, business leaders and residents who have taken on work the municipality stopped doing. Every session pairs someone accountable for the problem with someone who has evidence about it.

The morning opens with the money. In Are our metros f*cked?, Auditor-General Tsakani Maluleke and Scopa chair Songezo Zibi sit with the question every ratepayer mutters at the bottom of the invoice. Then, in Leaky cities, polluted waterways, follow the sewage from the burst pipe to the river, with the engineers and water activists who know where it goes.

Crime the Beloved Country brings the head of the Special Investigating Unit, Andy Mothibi, and Judge Edwin Cameron to a discussion about organised crime that no longer waits outside the gate but sits inside the state, on the payroll. Caryn Dolley asks what must be done.

The afternoon turns to what works. Dr Imtiaz Sooliman of Gift of the Givers is interviewed by Green in a session dedicated to the memory of Daily Maverick journalist Estelle Ellis. Artist James Delaney tells the story of The Wilds, the crime-ridden patch of Houghton he turned into one of Joburg’s busiest parks. A further session looks at the inner-city blocks now being reclaimed by the people who live in them.

The day closes with politics. Helen Zille, Herman Mashaba and analyst Susan Booysen discuss whether the metros can be turned around, or whether the coming ballot is the last realistic chance to try.

Urban scholar, Professor Edgar Pieterse, helps us to imagine what a fully functioning city could look like.

Ferial Haffajee, Marianne Thamm, Rebecca Davis, Caryn Dolley, Pieter-Louis Myburgh, Stephen Grootes, Lindsey Schutters and Dan Corder host across the programme. 

Tickets are on sale at dailymaverick.co.za/page/the-gathering-2026.

PARTNERS

The Gathering 2026 is presented in partnership with Ninety One, and supported by Binance, the University of the Witwatersrand, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and Radford Dale.

ABOUT THE GATHERING

The Gathering is Daily Maverick’s flagship live journalism event, held annually in Cape Town. The 2026 edition is framed around the local government elections and the state of South Africa’s metros.

ABOUT DAILY MAVERICK

Daily Maverick is an independent South African news organisation known for its investigative journalism. It is funded by its readers through the Maverick Insider programme, which has more than 32,000 members.