Ghaleb Cachalia

In April 2017, Cachalia laid a criminal charge of incitement and intimidation against Ekurhuleni Mayor, Mzwandile Masina, for threatening white anti-Zuma protestors with violence, and requested that the Ekurhuleni Council Speaker, Patricia Khumalo, investigate the matter.

He was sworn in as a DA MP on 4 May, 2017, and Philip de Lange took over the DA leadership in Ekurhuleni.

Cachalia had been a lifelong supporter of the ANC. However, he had become increasingly disillusioned since the Arms Deal controversy, and now believes that the ANC cannot be saved from the "kleptocracy", corruption and self-interest that have come to characterise the party. This led him to turn to the DA, who he had "always valued" "as a loyal opposition". He joined the DA as an ordinary member in early 2016, and ran as the DA's mayoral candidate for Ekurhuleni in the 2016 municipal elections, on a platform of transparent and accountable government. He lost to the ANC's candidate by only 11 votes.

Cachalia joined his father's business, which supplied school uniforms for black students, and completed an apprenticeship at a clothing manufacturing facility in Johannesburg, then opened such facilities in Malawi and Mozambique. In the late 1990s, Cachalia sold the businesses, which could not compete with clothing manufacturers from Asia in terms of price and supply. He retained only one retail outlet, whose shareholding he transferred to the company's employees; the business still runs in Johannesburg's central business district.

Ghaleb Cachalia (born c. 1956) is an entrepreneur and a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Democratic Alliance (DA). He is the son of anti-Apartheid activists Amina and Yusuf Cachalia, and a relative of former African National Congress (ANC) MP Ismail Cachalia.

Cachalia was born in Johannesburg in 1956, and grew up in the ghettos of Vrededorp, Fordsburg, and Nugget Street.