Former Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba will no longer put his hand up to lead the city he governed for more than three years and has set his sights on the national political stage.
The businessman turned politician’s new political party, ActionSA, which was launched end-August, was officially registered as a political party at the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) last week.
The party, which supports a free-market economy, nonracialism, social justice and adherence to the rule of law as its key values, is now officially ready to run for elections, of which the first for ActionSA will be 2021’s local government polls. These are likely to determine whether the party makes a dent in SA’s body politic or fades away.
Mashaba initially indicated before the party was launched that he will stand for the mayoral position in Johannesburg. However, he said in an interview on Friday that he had changed his mind after engagements on the matter.
It is almost a year since Mashaba abruptly resigned as mayor and as a DA member due to internal party politics in a week of turmoil after the re-election of former leader Helen Zille to the party’s top echelons, which Mashaba saw as a victory for people who stood “diametrically against my belief systems”.
Over the past year senior DA members such as Funzela Ngobeni, the DA’s mayoral candidate in Johannesburg after Mashaba’s resignation; Abel Tau, former DA regional chair in Tshwane; and Paul Boughey, former DA CEO, all joined Mashaba. Other politicians who joined the party include former ANC MP Makhosi Khoza and former EFF Gauteng chair Mandisa Mashego.
Mashaba said SA’s main problem is not at a municipal level, and that the ANC has to be unseated nationally if ActionSA is to “save this country”.
“Our supporters have requested me to please identify someone to be the mayoral candidate for the city of Johannesburg so that I can focus on national campaigns to unseat the ANC as a matter of urgency.”
He said the party believes that if he stands for mayor of Johannesburg ActionSA would win with an outright majority, but that would “take the focus away from the national approach”.
He will therefore help in all the municipalities where the party will contest next year, while building structures to prepare for the general election in 2024.
Bankrolled by family
Mashaba said it makes sense that he should run on a national level, as he has a national profile, not one that is restricted to Johannesburg. The party will at most contest 10 municipalities next year, with a specific focus on the big metros. “I don’t really want [us] to overstretch ourselves,” he said.
The party has for the most part been bankrolled by Mashaba’s family, with about 10% of funding coming from small donors. This could prove critical given how expensive it is to participate and campaign in elections.
Mashaba said while ActionSA will definitely have a presence in the metros in Gauteng — namely Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni — there is also interest in eThekwini, KwaZulu-Natal; Cape Town, Western Cape; and Nelson Mandela Bay, Eastern Cape.
He will push for the general elections to be brought forward as he believes SA cannot afford to have the ANC in power until 2024.
“If we are going to wait until 2024, ... at the rate at which the ANC is stealing now, whoever will take [over] the government in 2024 ... will not even have teaspoons [left],” Mashaba said.
The DA’s policy decisions taken in October, in which the party resolved not to use race as a proxy for disadvantage, though it still supports the principle of redress, will benefit his party electorally.
“In this country you have the ANC as a criminal enterprise, you have the EFF as anarchists, and you have the DA, [which] is causing such massive damage from a race relations point of view,” Mashaba said.
Despite this, he said the ANC is the only party with which he will not go into a coalition.
Every day of ANC rule is one in which more damage is done to the economy, he said.
Despite being nervous about the state of the country, he believes it can be saved, he said.
'It's ANC first' - historic misuse of state funds continues
Subscribe: iono.fm | Spotify | Apple Podcast | Pocket Casts | Player.fm
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.