Fellow South Africans, what a week this is turning out to be for the future of our country.
ActionSA Councillors across the country are doing what needs to be done to unseat the ANC, and put South Africans ahead of petty politics.
We, along with other parties, have made the difficult decision to elect DA mayors, despite their arrogance of ignoring the wishes of all parties in the multi-party negotiations, and acting in a manner consistent with a party that clearly did not want coalitions to work.
In Johannesburg, we knew that if it came down to a choice between ActionSA and the ANC, the DA would simply abstain, handing the keys to the metro to the ANC.
This is not what residents want, and this is not what residents deserve.
We made a commitment to all South Africans, that where we contest, we will unseat the ANC. We are sticking by that commitment.
The DA, after spending the last week throwing my name and the name of ActionSA into the dirt, will now have exactly what they didn’t want, across Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, and potentially eThekwini today:
The very minority coalition governments they have spoken against, without written agreements in place with any parties. Maybe now they will listen and consider other parties.
Let them demonstrate the same level of maturity shown to them by the multi-party coalition group and re-start negotiations again and negotiate coalitions in the interests of residents and not their own narrow political self-interest.
Let this be a new era of multi-party governance in South Africa.
The world will be watching.
Herman Mashaba
