Herman Mashaba knows that start-ups are hard. He did, after all, build a multimillion-rand business empire from nothing. That can’t have been easy. Mashaba did not launch and run his start-up in a conducive environment. He did it under apartheid, a system that went out of its way to thwart black people who wanted to start or run businesses.
Now Mashaba’s political start-up, ActionSA, finds itself rocked by reports of infighting, divisions and threats of walkouts. Many of his opponents would no doubt like to see Mashaba’s project fail. I disagree. It would be a tragedy for SA if this start-up crashed and burned. We need ActionSA and any other viable opposition to keep going through to 2024 at the very least. Our country’s future depends on it.
Mashaba has no doubt studied the history of political start-ups here at home and elsewhere. Our political landscape is littered with the carcasses of political parties that started with great promise and then crashed because of factionalism, ego trips, ideological differences, poor funding or sheer exhaustion.
When Nelson Mandela’s ANC fired Bantu Holomisa for pointing out corruption by one of his colleagues back in the late 1990s, the former Transkei leader formed the UDM. The party is still hobbling along, but it is far from the great hope it was back then.
When Jacob Zuma started his great project to capture the state, Mbhazima Shilowa and Mosiuoa Lekota formed COPE. It did incredibly well at the polls, but leadership squabbles destroyed it.
The great hope elicited by the arrival of Mamphela Ramphele’s Agang SA was extinguished by her joining forces with the DA and the swift disintegration of the party after that.
Numerous others have come and gone. The great success remains Julius Malema’s EFF, which has registered consistent gains since its formation just under 10 years ago.
Its utterances on immigration are deplorable, but the party is key to the strengthening of our democracy
ActionSA has placed itself at the heart of SA politics within a year and a half of its formation. It won 90 seats in the six municipal councils where it fielded candidates in the November elections.
But it is facing turbulence now. In KwaZulu-Natal its big drawcard, former ANC MP Makhosi Khoza, has fallen out with Mashaba. In Tshwane last week videos emerged of ActionSA members in an unseemly brawl and shouting match. In Ekurhuleni and Soweto there are reports of unhappiness among members, with threats of a walkout that would benefit the DA.
Mashaba’s reading of these incidents is that there are agents provocateurs who want to destabilise ActionSA from within. He told IOL that action would be taken to weed out such people: "I was not born yesterday. Just watch this space, people are going to be former members of ActionSA."
I am not quite sure that destabilisation is the cause of the ructions.
The party needs to reflect on the effect money and positions have — many of the fights in ActionSA are about those who did not make it onto councillors’ lists.
No matter. What is important to consider is what a weakening of ActionSA would mean for SA right now. Now, more than ever, we need a strong, co-operative and vibrant opposition. The country is in a precarious state. The ANC has lost its way. Its leader has chosen the appeasement of his comrades above a strong stand for SA.
In this time of chaos and uncertainty, Mashaba has at the very least shown himself to be a strong proponent of the rule of law, nonracialism and economic prosperity.
Most important, despite being taunted as a political neophyte by Malema, Mashaba has been the glue that has kept the coalitions in Joburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni together. That is important. With the carping and jostling between political leaders that’s been going on lately, the ability to build consensus and forge a common agenda to force the ruling party to support the constitution is paramount.
I find ActionSA’s utterances on immigration deplorable and xenophobic, but that does not mean this party is not key to the strengthening of our democracy.
Mashaba and his colleagues need to keep it going.
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