DA struggles to control Mashaba
Joburg mayoral candidate is proving a handful for the opposition party to keep on script, writes FIONA FORDE
HERMAN Mashaba is an accidental politician with a strong propensity to put his foot in his mouth. He pledges his wholehearted support for the ANC-led Treasury, waxes lyrical about Boris Johnson and has nothing negative to say about Donald Trump.
Perhaps not surprising, then, is the strong rumour that Mashaba’s bid to become mayor of Johannesburg for the DA is floundering. Party insiders say they struggle to keep the 56-year-old on script and are constantly frustrated by his “gatekeepers”, so much so that a crack team had to be parachuted in from Cape Town a few weeks back to try salvage the campaign.
But this is hardly Mashaba’s fault. The DA is brimming with candidates who are short on political savvy, and who lack the ability to mine the opportunities presented by the ANC.
The party made the grievous mistake five years ago of fielding a young and relatively unknown candidate — Mmusi Maimane, who was 31 years old at the time — for the position of Johannesburg mayor. Although it increased its share of the vote that year, the DA was well off the victory mark with 34% of voter support.
Now it’s Mashaba’s turn to try his hand at winning the city for the DA, and he is the first to concede he is a bit of a political rookie. “I really never thought six months ago I would become a public servant,” he says, rather tellingly.
Two candidates were short-listed to run for mayor. Mashaba’s opponent was Rabelani Dagada, a professor who has been an active member of the DA since 2014.
Mashaba is perhaps the better known, though not because of his politics: his is one of the best rags-to-riches stories in SA, which made him a household name.
The son of a domestic worker, he was reared by his three sisters in relative poverty in GaRamotse, Hammanskraal. Adamant that history would not repeat itself in his generation, he dealt in dagga while in his teens to earn a quick buck.
He enrolled at the University of the North for a Bachelor of Arts, but dropped out in 1980 without finishing his second year. He took a job at a Spar outlet, but that too was short-lived. For a couple of years he worked with a furniture manufacturer, then 1983 he bought a car and became a salesman of all sorts of items, including insurance.
One of his easiest sells turned out to be hair products for black women. Demand was sky-high and the market was wide open. In 1985 he co-founded Black Like Me, the ethnic hair product company that gave him his big break.
Over the next three decades he grew his business, diversified into other sectors and settled into a comfortable existence along with Connie, his partner in his private and corporate lives.
“I was a businessman, always, and had no interest in politics. And in the first two elections — in 1994 and 1999 — I voted for the ANC,” he says. “But from then on, I voted for the DA.” When the ANC was returned to power for a fifth consecutive term in 2014, much to Mashaba’s disappointment, he decided to leave his armchair and try his hand at politics.
“I did not want to run away from my country,” he says, so he became a paid-up member of the DA. He claims he approached the party about running as its mayoral candidate for Johannesburg and convinced the party he could win outright.
However, a few months into the campaign, the party’s internal polls began to show victory was not very certain and the DA’s working relationship with Mashaba floundered.
Apparently Mashaba’s chief of staff, Isabella Morris — who co-wrote his autobiography Black Like You — is a rigid gatekeeper and part of a crew presenting daily problems to the party’s campaign team. They tend to take their own decisions as though he is running on an independent ticket.
In May a heavy-hitting team from Cape Town was roped in to manage Mashaba and attempt to turbocharge his campaign. Part of their brief, allegedly, is to afford him few, if any, opportunities to stray. But they too are struggling to get results.
In early June Mashaba was left redfaced when he failed to acquit himself well during a debate with Johannesburg mayor Parks Tau at The Gathering, hosted by the Daily Maverick. That, apparently, was after a full week of intensive coaching by his crack team.
He still says he has full faith in the ANC-led Treasury. That may well be his personal view, but it is a rather odd comment to make in public when part of the machinery that is intent on toppling the ANC government.
His support for the Treasury follows last week’s Brexit vote, of which he is supportive. “If that’s really what the British people want, I think they deserve it,” he says. “We must allow democracy to reign.” A
SKED how Britain’s exit from the EU might affect SA, he scores an own goal without a moment’s hesitation: “Well, I think listening to the minister of finance (Pravin Gordhan), SA would be in a position to withstand anything that happens. I have confidence in our finance ministry and our Treasury that they will do whatever it takes to ensure that SA is shielded from this.”
He does not take the opportunity to expound on how the DA might manage such a situation, given the chance. Even though he is not running for national office, Mashaba surely has an obligation to punt his party where possible, or speak in more considered terms, as Maimane has done when asked about Brexit.
According to Maimane, the outcome of the British referendum has “serious
I was a businessman, always, and had no interest in politics. And in the first two elections — in 1994 and 1999 — I voted for the ANC. But from then on, I voted for the DA I have confidence in our finance ministry and our Treasury that they will do whatever it takes to ensure that SA is shielded
implications” for SA’s economy, and “the DA is concerned that this will mean SA will edge closer to a recession and more jobs will be lost. This risk must be treated seriously by the government.”
Mashaba is also a staunch supporter of Boris Johnson, the idiosyncratic Tory who has come in for some heavy flak for nudging his country to divorce from the EU, and one of the bookies’ favourites, until Thursday, to replace Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party David Cameron. “He (Johnson) was an excellent mayor of London; he took the city to another level. I think the chances are that he will become another great prime minister of the UK.”
A few months back, Mashaba had a long lunch with Johnson in London and has since become his ardent supporter. Yet he is unable to explain what he would emulate about Johnson if he were to become Johannesburg’s mayor.
Again, Mashaba falls short on specifics when given an opportunity to campaign for the DA.
On US businessman-turned-politician Donald Trump, he is surprisingly reticent and reluctant to take him down. “I really see him as the presidential hopeful for the Republican party.”
Would he make a good president? “Only the American people could judge that.”
With the elections five weeks away, this is Mashaba’s main message: “I need the voters not to use their hearts, but to use their heads. I want to be the jobs’ mayor. I want people to see me as their alternative.
“I want to use Johannesburg to address the unemployment pandemic. I want to appeal to the youth, the victims of the mismanagement of the economy. The economy is going to be my big priority.”
He rows back into his personal rags-toriches biography, arguing that if he can make it, so too can millions of others.
But anecdotes will only take him so far, and Mashaba fails to provide any convincing detail or thorough plan that will convince voters to support him at this stage of the campaign. I
NSTEAD, with a push and a shove over the next few weeks, he believes he can do it. “This is a tough job, but I will learn. I have always been a learner.”
The eleventh hour is hardly time for learning, though.
The DA has ploughed millions of rand into polling and surveying the electorate, more than any other political party. It is understandably reluctant to share its results, so it is hard to know how Mashaba is really faring at this stage.
But while he is the face of the DA’s campaign in Johannesburg, those who intend voting for the party have either done so in the past and are already committed supporters, irrespective of Mashaba, or they are newcomers looking for an alternative to the ANC regardless of who is fielded as the mayoral candidate.
Perhaps that is why the DA takes the kind of risks it does when it places such inexperienced candidates in such highprofile roles.