Nasiphi Moya

Profile

From Mthatha to Cape Town

Moya grew up in Mpikwana, a part of Mthatha in the Eastern Cape, and moved to Cape Town to study at the University of Cape Town, where, according to a Sowetan profile, her political involvement began in her first year.

She completed a degree in social science with a focus on politics and public administration, followed by an honours and a master’s degree at the same university, and later earned a PhD in political studies at the University of the Western Cape in 2021.

Years in the DA

She joined the Democratic Alliance in 2011 and worked as its national manager of performance development. In 2016 she became a group head in the office of the chief whip in the City of Tshwane.

She later served as chief of staff to the city’s executive mayor; EWN places her in that role in 2019 under then-mayor Stevens Mokgalapa, while the Sowetan profile dates her appointment to May 2020, a discrepancy the sources do not resolve.

Switching to ActionSA

Moya left the DA for ActionSA in 2021 and served as the party’s chief governance director from 2022 to 2024. She became Tshwane’s first deputy executive mayor under Cilliers Brink in January 2024, though the Sowetan profile gives the date of her swearing-in as a proportional representation councillor and election as deputy as January 2023, and the two dates conflict.

Elected Mayor in October 2024

On October 9, 2024, Moya was elected Executive Mayor of Tshwane, succeeding Brink, with the ANC announcing it would back her. A Sowetan profile published the same day reported that she was expected to win and that the ANC would support her. At her 100-day mark in February 2025, she told reporters her administration had made what she called meaningful progress and laid a foundation for further change, acknowledged that not every target had been met, and named financial stability, infrastructure development and better by-law enforcement among her six priorities.

The 2019 Overpayment and Repayment Plan

In August 2025, EWN reported that Moya had agreed to a payment plan to repay almost R270,000 that the City of Tshwane overpaid her in 2019. The sum arose after the city was reclassified from a Category A grade nine to grade ten municipality in 2018, which raised senior managers’ pay; Moya, then chief of staff, received a lump sum of R268,000, one of 78 senior officials who received adjustments that a later benchmarking exercise found to be errors. In a letter to the DA, she said she learned of the debt in July 2024, four years after leaving that post, and that the debt had prescribed but she would pay monthly. DA councillor Jacqui Uys said it was unfortunate that Moya had to be prompted to do what was right. The same report noted she had previously repaid R10,000 received in 2020 for a trip to Saudi Arabia that was cancelled because of COVID-19. No wrongdoing finding against her is recorded in the sources reviewed.

The 2026 Election Bid

In May 2026, ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba introduced Moya as the party’s Tshwane mayoral candidate at an event in Nellmapius, east of Pretoria. Accepting the nomination, she asked residents for five more years and said her first 18 months were about stabilisation, describing a city she inherited as having unstable finances, deteriorating infrastructure and failing service delivery systems. Those descriptions are her own and the party’s. As of November 6, 2026, with about 81% of votes counted nationally, ActionSA stood at 4.92% nationally according to EWN, and in Tshwane had won more than 300,000 votes and 14 seats so far; Moya said the city’s coalition had worked without a formal agreement, with partners needing to put ego aside.

Office Timeline