Benita Cotton-Orr: Georgia's new mayor reflects on her South African roots

Benita Cotton-Orr, a former resident of Wentworth in Durban, South Africa, has made history by winning the mayoral elections in Sky Valley, Georgia, with 53.41% of the votes.

This comes shortly after Zohran Mamdani took office as the Mayor of New York City, showcasing the growing influence of South Africans on foreign shores. 

Cotton-Orr, a native of Simon's Town, South Africa, and her family were compelled to move to Durban. This relocation was necessitated after her father was displaced to the Cape Flats under the Group Areas Act, resulting in the loss of his livelihood.

"My family, they were fishing folk on the coast, had to move into the Cape flats. There were no jobs, so my father brought the family to Durban to look for work. As a toddler, I grew up in Durban. I did grow up bilingual because my father was English-speaking and my mother was Afrikaans-speaking from Riversdale," she said in an online interview. 

After the relocation

"Moving to Durban, my father started working in Clairwood, and we struggled to find permanent accommodation throughout the time we lived in Wentworth.

"We were one of those families who earned too much to get government assistance and not enough to be able to own a home, so we moved around a lot when we were in Wentworth. In fact, I was already at Rhodes (University) when my parents finally afforded their own house." 

Childhood

While in Durban, Cotton-Orr faced various challenges but also found inspiration in her mother, who was an active member of their community.

"My mother was a nurse. When she had all five of us, with me being the oldest, she was a housewife, and she was very active at St. Gabriel's Anglican Church, very active in the school committees.

"I always saw this female leadership role in my mother, and as I went through high school, I was head prefect at Wentworth High and I was Miss Wentworth High and stuff like that."

Tertiary education

"I studied journalism at Rhodes University. I was always a really good writer ... It was during the time of a lot of turmoil in the Eastern Cape.

"They had the ANC groups and the security police infiltrating the student population; it was a really rough time to be a student in a university in the Eastern Cape, but the one thing that really helped me was the fact that I saw that the struggle against apartheid was not entirely a black struggle, and that has taken me through the years ...

"I saw people who suffered from all races, and I've always had a non-racial perspective because of that," shared Cotton-Orr. 

Life after marriage

Cotton-Orr and her husband moved to Johannesburg after their marriage. He transferred to Atlanta, United States, shortly after, and Cotton-Orr followed thereafter.  

"I was really reluctant to move because I was enjoying my career. I moved because I had 1 and a half kids, and it was the height of apartheid; it was the height of journalists being picked up in the middle of the night by the security police, and it was just a scary time, and I didn't want my children to grow up like that.

"The decision for me was, I have survived apartheid, I have lived through it, but I don't want that for my kids, so I left my family and moved to Atlanta."

Despite the challenges of adapting to life in a new country, Cotton-Orr built a solid career in journalism and community policy.

After a successful 13-year stint at the "Atlanta Paper" and on the Georgia Policy Foundation, she and her family moved to rural Georgia. 

"Later, we moved up to the mountains, and I absolutely loved it up there. It is very rural, and I didn't move up there to run for mayor."

Running for mayor

"I had not been directly involved in politics. I was more involved in public policy, giving counsel to elected officials to local government on how to operate more efficiently, more cost-effectively.

"I am very much a limited government person because, you know, when you have a government that can come in and take your land away from you, it helps you appreciate the restrictions on government power.

"I ran because I saw the current city council giving approval to some very heavy and intense development in our community, it's a tiny rural community with two roads, it's mostly a retirement community, so some of the residents, knowing my background in public policy, communications and with my network of connections through the years, asked whether I would run for mayor, so I did," she said.

Cotton-Orr, being a coloured person from South Africa, believes that her race did not hinder her candidacy.

"I'll have you know, coming from South Africa as a coloured person, moving to a county (little province), that is 3% black, my colour and my race did not become an issue.

"I did not run on race, I ran on my capabilities, and I have always talked about that through the years, that there should be no excuses. Don't say that because of my colour that I can't do something.

"I am a firm believer in talent and in skill-sets and the best person for the job, and I could not have run for this seat if I didn't think that I was the best person for the job. 

"The most important take away, for me is the fact that, growing up in South Africa as a second class citizen you were always told and it was always enforced that you were not good enough, so getting over that hurdle through the years, has been tough because I would second guess myself all the time ... Then I realised that I am good enough ...

Paying it forward

"I've always held myself up because I come from Wentworth and I know how few role models there are out there, and I always believe we need to mentor and we need to have role models so people can aspire to things, and I wanted to come back to South Africa, this was before I left the Georgia Policy Foundation ...

"I wanted to come back and pay it forward, and I felt like my community would benefit from me returning. A friend said to me, 'It's too late to go back, your time has passed in Wentworth and Durban, but the best thing that you can do is champion the community from where you are'."

Even from afar, she has actively engaged with her hometown, sharing her life and encouraging others through social media. 

"I've stayed in touch with everybody, I've worked on the Wentworth social media pages, on the Durbanite social media pages, I've put inspiring stuff on there and shared about my life and family, just in the hope that somebody sees a spark of inspiration."