Geordin Hill-Lewis has officially been elected as the youngest Cape Town Mayor during the City of Cape Town’s first council meeting on Thursday.
The municipality held its very first council meeting for the newly-elected councillors on Thursday, where proceedings were being steered by City of Cape Town municipal manager Lungelo Mbandazayo.
Mbandazayo was at the helm of the meeting until a new speaker was elected. The speaker is responsible for ensuring oversight, accountability, integrity, the discipline of office, and the efficient running of council meetings.
This role was again given to Felicity Purchase, who had previously taken over the position earlier this year when Dirk Smit, who served as councillor and Speaker for 15 years, retired.
The ANC nominated Xolani Sotashe as the preferred candidate, while the African Christian Democratic Party’s Grant Haskin was also nominated.
After Purchase’s election was ratified, they eventually moved on to the election of the new City of Cape Town mayor.
The people who were nominated for the position of mayor were councillor Jack Miller from the Cape Independence party, councillor Noluthando Makasi from the African National Congress (ANC), and councillor Geordin Hill-Lewis from the Democratic Alliance (DA).
After 224 councillors voted for mayor, there were 15 spoilt ballots, and there were 20 abstentions. Miller got two votes, Makasi received 46 votes, and Hill-Lewis won 141 votes and was elected as the mayor oThe DA initially unveiled Hill-Lewis as the party’s mayoral candidate for the City of Cape Town back in August, when DA leader John Steenhuisen made the announcement of the party’s candidates contesting in the major cities.
At 34 years old, Hill-Lewis is Cape Town’s youngest mayor since 1994. Up until now, he has been serving as the DA’s finance spokesperson, a post he held since June 2019, after current provincial Finance and Economic Opportunities MEC David Maynier moved to the provincial legislature.
First appointed to the National Assembly in August 2011, Hill-Lewis attended Edgemead High School and holds a BCom and an honours degree in politics, philosophy and economics, from the University of Cape Town.
He obtained a Master’s degree in economic policy at the University of London.
