Herman Mashaba proved himself to be a highly successful businessman, and a competent mayor of Johannesburg (in glaring contrast to his ANC predecessors and several pathetic and appallingly poor successors). His political nous does not match his record. He ought to think very carefully about his current path because when his party fails, he will ruin the political careers of some good people in his party.
He fought the election by swearing that it would never put the ANC in power and that a deal with the ANC would be over his dead body. Despite this, ASA spent the whole election campaign attacking the DA, rather than the ANC. The voters took note and ASA in Johannesburg lost 200,000 of the votes it received in the previous municipal election. ASA is Cope in the making.
Opposition voters, not the lunatic left in the EFF and MKP, clearly wanted a GNU or Coalition, call it what you will. The ANC lost huge swathes of its support. It had no option but to negotiate a government with a secure Parliamentary majority. ASA was determined to stay out of it and its handful of MPs sit on the sidelines, receiving little or no publicity or media attention, and certainly with minimal impact.
Premier Panyaza Lesufi of Gauteng always ploughs his own furrow. He is winning again. He was responsible for inflicting on Johannesburg an ANC/EFF/PA/ Al Jama Ah coalition, producing two execrable mayors in succession. He was also responsible for the inadequate coalition running Ekurhuleni. Lesufi was determined to keep the DA out of his Gauteng Government and made derisory offers he knew the DA would have to decline.
We heard that Mashaba, Lesufi, and ASA were contemplating a Johannesburg flip-flop, despite the promises to the voters. And so it transpired. A new ANC mayor was installed, and the former mayor, an incompetent, was made a member of the Mayoral Committee. Likewise, Speaker Margaret Arnold, of the AIC, was publicly humiliated and dethroned.
With no discernible qualifications for this mammoth task, she was put in charge of Johannesburg’s R84 million budget. The only change was that a young ASA councillor became the Speaker. That was Mashaba’s price. The new Speaker then made a fool of herself, making a robust speech spelling out all her priorities. The problem was that her priorities had almost nothing to do with her role as Speaker and everything to do with the Mayoral role.