A South African politician swam in a giant mud pit to highlight broken roads in Johannesburg.

Helen Zille, 75, a veteran politician and the Democratic Alliance's (South Africa's main opposition party) Johannesburg mayoral candidate, recently engaged in a unique protest. The former mayor of Cape Town, dressed in a wetsuit, snorkel mask, and a pink and white swimming cap, descended into a giant water-filled mud pit in Douglasdale, an upscale suburb of Johannesburg, and proceeded to swim.

This was not just a small pothole on a regular road, but a large trench created by a burst water pipe. Zille stated that although several attempts had been made to repair the pipe, authorities had failed to provide a proper solution to the problem for about three years. She used this act to severely criticize the poor city management, broken roads, and failures in service delivery, including water and electricity cuts, in Johannesburg, which is considered Africa's wealthiest city in terms of private wealth and is known as the 'City of Gold'.

She uploaded a video to the internet showing her swimming in the muddy water, using the trench on the road as a public swimming pool. In the video, she was seen jokingly enjoying a Saturday afternoon swim, dipping her head into the water as if searching for fish. This act, which demonstrated that if a city council neglects a water-filled pit for years, it starts to look less like a road defect and more like an unwanted public swimming pool, quickly went viral on social media and garnered significant attention from television news channels, as it transformed a common public complaint into a humorous spectacle.

Responding after the video rapidly spread across the internet, Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero stated that the pit was created due to a pipe that had been continuously faulty for three years. However, the very next day after Zille's act, the city council took steps to repair the water pipe and fill the pit on the road. Meanwhile, the mayor also warned children to refrain from imitating such dangerous acts, and foreign media further reported that the Democratic Alliance later accused, via another video, that the water pipe had burst again.