Democratic Alliance Ward Councillor

DA ward councillor David Potter is known to be one of the most responsive councillors in the City of Johnnesburg. Whether you’re nagging him on Twitter or WhatsApping him about power outages on a Saturday morning, he’s always getting involved and helping out.

What’s less well known is that Potter is also the youngest ward councillor in the city and, luckily for his constituents in Ward 102, he’s more interested in service delivery and less in politics.

In his old neighbourhood, Blairgowrie (now part of his ward), Potter got involved with community initiatives in the suburb in 2003, when he was 17. He then got involved with other residents associations, he says, helping them to set up websites, email and SMS systems and liaising with residents and council departments to get things done.

He has been more formally involved since 2007, roughly when he joined the DA, as part of the Ward 102 ward committee. He stood in the municipal elections in 2011 and won with 81% of the votes.

In 2013, Potter launched Look and Log, an easy reference of all relevant City of Joburg contacts, that citizens can use to log issues they see in their neighbourhoods. “If the City doesn’t know about it, it can’t fix it,” he says, and citizens need to take responsibility too.

Potter says he will stand for re-election in 2016 and his long-term plan is to remain a councillor, at the forefront of service delivery.

His attitude to service carries through to his day job too. As operations director for Acres of Love, he manages 27 homes that house orphaned children in Gauteng and the Western Cape.

He looks slightly confused when asked what he does other than work. “Having two jobs, I guess I don’t have much time,” he says.
— Samantha Perry

Twitter: @DavidCOJ102