LOCAL ELECTIONS 2026: A red beret in the Deep South — meet the EFF’s unlikely ward candidate

Days before the 2026 local government elections, Gabrielle Maritz is on the campaign trail for the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) as the party’s councillor candidate for Cape Town’s Ward 61, the area flanking the sea-swept south from Glencairn to Kommetjie.

Originally from Pretoria, a High School Overkruin matriculant of 2002, Maritz now considers herself “a Deep South local” – she lives with her wife and seven-year-old daughter on the coast between Simon’s Town and Fish Hoek. 

With deliberate, thoughtful words, she relays her love for creative arts and animals. She speaks of Earth as a living organism. “We are one consciousness. This is the concept of ubuntu,” she says. 

Maritz identifies as anti-capitalist and joined the EFF a year ago, initially more as an activist than a politician, she says. On her official campaign Facebook page, she outlines some primary motivations for her EFF candidacy as restoring a voice for the LGBTQIA community and restoring “quality services for everyone” in Ward 61, especially vulnerable people like the elderly and the homeless. 

She tells Daily Maverick, “A lot of things have been said about the EFF. But if you go and you read the manifesto properly, it speaks about once we’ve redressed the past, once we’ve managed to have a more equitable system... At that point we don’t need to perpetuate racial classifications; then we can live in a truly nonracial society.”

Maritz voices reluctance to reduce people to demographics. “I don’t think of myself or anybody as necessarily a certain demographic, because we all contain multitudes and no demographic is a monolith,” she says. However, she hopes to build a bridge between the EFF and people who may not have considered voting for the party before. 

Asked whether she thinks she might inspire more Afrikaans people to join the party, she says: “I don’t know, we’ll have to see, because Afrikaans people have been scared of the EFF. Yet, some of my neighbours don’t mind, and some of them even help me.”

She adds: “You know, there is a certain Afrikaans demographic though that does despise me because of joining the EFF. They see me as a race traitor, a pariah. So I will never convince them of anything. And I wouldn’t necessarily try. I mean, I can just keep talking about our policies, talking about myself, trying to get through to them.”

From Pretoria to Fundão

Aged 42, Maritz’s background spans Pretoria, where she worked as a lecturer in media studies at Boston Media House, and London, where she obtained a diploma in music technology from West London College. She also lived for a while in Wexford in Ireland, a town “with lots of creative energy” where she bunkered down with her wife during the Covid lockdown, immersed in writing and book culture. Maritz’s wife is British, and their daughter was born in Ireland. 

Next, the family moved to the touristic town of Fundão, in central Portugal, where in 2024 Maritz opened Livros Tintos Bookshop, which sold everything from popular titles to literary fiction, anthropology and history books, while hosting events for writers from the area and Lisbon. 

She had three dogs (two bassets and a Labrador) that travelled with her from South Africa to Ireland and then to Portugal, where they died of old age.

“I’m still grieving my dogs,” she says. “Like some nights I still cry over the dogs, and the last one died in 2023; they were all roughly the same age, which is a mistake as they go soon after the other.”

Last year in Fundão, a meditative dream prompted Maritz’s return to South Africa, and to the Southern Peninsula in particular. She spent many childhood holidays along this coast; in addition, her great-grandfather (on her paternal side), a prisoner of war from the old Transvaal, was buried at Simon’s Town Seaforth Old Burying Ground. 

“I was uneasy where I was in Europe,” Maritz recalls. “Then there was one night where I did a sort of dream meditation. I dreamt that I was flying over the Deep South. Like I said, I’m a spiritual person. And then I just kind of had this yearning in my soul to return here. Mama Africa was calling; I could close my eyes and see it.”

Soon after her dream, a wildfire destroyed their mobile home on farmland outside Fundão, and they escaped with just their four cats and important documents. This was the last straw, the final push back home to South Africa. 

They rehomed their cats and moved to Cape Town. “The cats went to a very amazing place,” says Maritz. “I actually saw videos of them last week, and they're so happy where they are. They have a beautiful life, also on a farm.”

Fire and land audits

Now, running for councillor is a full-time job, says Maritz. “It’s hitting the streets campaigning, putting up posters, going to party meetings. Going to debates as part of the audience. Creating content, reaching people online. So it’s all of that. So it’s good that I don’t have another day job because it’s a lot of work, obviously.”

Amid rallying for votes, she is a mother. “I have to be a full-time mother as my wife works full-time. Things like taking our child to school, cooking dinner and going shopping, all of that.”

Reading remains a priority for Maritz. A book she recently enjoyed was Ways of Being Born: Tracing the Footprints of Birth in Africa, by Dr Mmatshilo Motsei, which she says explores indigenous African midwifery alongside biomedical medicine.

“So it’s really fascinating, the way she [Motsei] talks about a lot of knowledge that was lost through biomedical practices. She’s not saying that only the indigenous way is right. And she’s not saying that only the modern way is right. She’s trying to kind of navigate using both, taking the best of both.”

Given her own harrowing wildfire experience, Maritz comments on the recurring fire hazards in Ward 61’s informal settlements: Ocean View and Red Hill, and Masiphumelele in adjoining Ward 69.

“They’re really close to my heart because I’ve been through it myself. Like when there was this big fire in Masiphumelele earlier this year, it really touched my heartstrings because I could feel empathy for these families; I know exactly what it’s like. And then obviously being from a socioeconomic background where you don’t have the support systems I have…”

On the socioeconomic challenges facing people in informal settlements, she says: “The EFF, our policy in any ward where we are voted in, is to immediately do land audits to see where we can make better use of land and where we can potentially build housing for people. In the places where we already have informal settlements, it’s about restoring dignity. So no pit toilets, making sure as many people as possible can get electricity. And obviously looking at waste collection.”

Wrapping up our interview, she comments on another pertinent issue in Cape Town’s southern peninsula – baboons.

“I feel absolutely disgusted that we are putting sentient animals, who are part of our wildlife treasure, in enclosures. These animals have been here far longer than any of us. I refuse to believe that there aren’t better solutions available. I am worried about what wildlife heritage we will leave for our children. It’s not ubuntu.”

Maritz says she has her wife’s wholehearted support – and that of her mother. She describes her father as “a silent, strong type of man”, who doesn’t talk much either way. Her parents, who used to work for a company that installed exhibitions at events as she grew up, now live in Fundão in Portugal. DM