Beyond employment and bureaucracy: inside Herman Mashaba’s vision for Johannesburg

ELECTIONS

Municipal governance in South Africa often feels caught in an endless cycle of unfulfilled promises, crumbling infrastructure and bureaucratic inertia

 As the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) approaches its next defining political chapter, the debate over who can rescue Africa’s economic hub has intensified. Among the most polarising and determined figures in this debate is ActionSA founder and former Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba.

In a frank, wide-ranging interview about his mayoral campaign, Mashaba outlined his blue-print for fixing the country’s largest metropolitan municipality. Refusing to rely on conventional political rhetoric or quick-fix soundbites, he con-fronted the realities of Johannesburg’s multibillion-rand infrastructure backlog, institu-tional corruption and systemic poverty, offering a candid glimpse into what another Mashaba administration might look like.

The economic reality: Fixing the foundation before the infrastructure

Any serious assessment of Johannesburg must grapple with its balance sheet. Critics often point out that ambitious electoral manifestos, promising faster repairs, a strengthened police force and tariff increases capped at inflation, frequently lack rigorous costing and timelines. When pressed on how ActionSA plans to fund these promises without placing further strain on municipal finances, Mashaba was uncompromising.

‘Well, there’s no way that the numbers cannot work,’ Mashaba stated. ‘Because if you look at how you would improve the revenue of the City of Johannes-burg, the first thing that you have to do is to put in a profes-sional public service.’

According to Mashaba, the loss of municipal funds is not primarily a structural revenue problem but a moral and mana-gerial failure.

‘Unfortunately, the city right now is run by cadres, people who are not there to serve society,’ he argued. ‘They wake up every morning to go and look at oppor-tunities to commit corruption. So one of the first orders of business is actually to get rid of the cadres, putting people who are in positions because of what they know, [not] who they know.’

Mashaba’s immediate intervention plan centres on an independent skills audit, con-ducted by a professional service provider from his first day in office. By removing politically connected appointees whom he accuses of diverting municipal resources, Mashaba main-tains that funding can be redirected towards service delivery.

Lessons from 2016 - 2019: Eliminating ‘vanity projects’

Mashaba is no stranger to the mayoral office, having led a multiparty coalition government in Johannesburg from 2016 to 2019. He points to his record during those years as evidence that a financial turnaround is possible through fiscal discipline and the cancellation of unne-cessary expenditure.

Recalling his early days in office, Mashaba shared examples of what he regarded as insti-tutional excess.

‘When I took over as a mayor, two days later, six o’clock people deliver newspapers, seven, eight newspapers, including Afrikaans newspa-pers ... deliver to many senior executives at the cost of – millions of rands, 18 million a year.’

He says he immediately cancelled the month-to-month contract.

Similarly, he discovered municipal offices equipped with premium DStv packages costing R1-million a month, alongside substantial inter-national travel budgets.

‘In the budget, 76 million rands for interna-tional travel,’ Mashaba noted. ‘The city with already 170 billion rands infrastructure backlog. What is the municipal city doing around the world? Travelling ... We’re running a municipality, we’re not running foreign affairs.

By requiring international travel to be approved by the city manager, his administra-tion reduced that expenditure from R76-million to R3.6-million.

Altogether, Mashaba claims his administra-tion recovered R2.1-billion through the elimination of vanity projects and improved revenue collection. When he left office in 2019, revenue collection rates were between 92% and 93%, compared with 81% to 82% when he took office.

The infrastructure mountain and the myth of the ‘three-thing’ fix

Despite these reported successes, Johannes-burg’s challenges have continued to grow. The infrastructure backlog, estimated at approxim-ately R170-billion when Mashaba left office, now exceeds R200-billion.

When asked to provide a 100-day checklist of three achievable promises for frustrated voters, a familiar feature of political cam-paigning, Mashaba rejected what he described as ‘political gimmicks’.

‘You can’t run the government by doing one thing. It’s total madness,’ Mashaba insisted. ‘Government, that’s why you’ve got 10 MMCs ... All of them very critical. That’s why ... I’m the only mayor in the history of this country where I’ve already announced my executive team. People who are going to lead the political offices, the 10 political offices, [so that] on day one, when we start the office, they must hit the ground running.’

Rather than focusing on three isolated out-comes, Mashaba regards governance as an interconnected system.

Water, electricity, roads, housing and public safety must be addressed simultaneously through a specialised executive team whose members are held accountable for their performance.

Housing and public safety: Actionable blueprints

While rejecting arbitrary lists, Mashaba did elaborate on specific targets in critical sectors, particularly housing and policing.

On housing, traditionally a provincial and national government responsibility, Mashaba advocates the inner-city rejuvenation policy he initiated in 2017.

By targeting abandoned, hijacked and derelict buildings, his administration awarded 154 properties to the private sector, creating a pipeline of approximately 14 500 affordable housing units.

‘I’m going to produce more housing, more than national government would produce at the national level,’ he asserted.

He added that underutilised industrial land, including former factory sites in Alexandra, could be legally expropriated and repurposed for affordable accommodation.

On public safety, Mashaba outlined an extensive recruitment programme to address South Africa’s high crime rates.

‘My plan, it’s in writing, that when I take over, I’m going to employ additional 500 police officers ... every year, a minimum of 500 police officers.’

This would amount to 2 500 additional officers over a five-year term.

When challenged about systemic corruption within existing law enforcement agencies, Mashaba reiterated that reform must begin at the top.

‘Right at the beginning of our interview, I spoke to you about professionalisation of the public service ... When the city is run by profes-sional people, you’ll see how corruption will drop.’

Restoring dignity, culture and economic investment

Beyond infrastructure and policing, Mashaba’s vision for ActionSA includes what he regards as a broader social and cultural renewal.

He expressed frustration with the neglect of sport, arts and culture, areas he intends to revitalise to promote social cohesion and youth engagement.

Crucially, Mashaba links effective municipal governance directly to economic growth. He argues that many residents cannot afford rising municipal tariffs because the city’s dysfunction has discouraged private-sector investment and limited employment opportunities.

Citing Auditor-General reports from his mayoral term, Mashaba noted that investment attraction increased from R4.5-billion to more than R9-billion during his first full budget cycle, eventually reaching R17-billion by 2018 - 2019.

‘People are not going to work because the private sector is not going to invest in a city or country which is dysfunctional,’ Mashaba said. ‘So if you want your people to work and be able to afford to pay things for themselves, create an enabling environment by stopping corruption, by professionalising the public sector and so forth.’

His argument is that reliable municipal ser-vices, sound financial management and accountable leadership are essential to attracting investment, creating jobs and improving residents’ ability to meet their finan-cial obligations.

The road ahead

Herman Mashaba’s political journey, from suc-cessful entrepreneur to Democratic Alliance mayor and ultimately founder of ActionSA, has been marked by friction with established polit-ical parties.

Reflecting on his previous tenure, he spoke candidly about how traditional parties struggled with his focus on poor black com-munities, regarding his approach as an exception rather than a fundamental constitu-tional responsibility.

As Johannesburg prepares for its next elect-oral contest, Mashaba’s message is clear: he believes the city can be repaired, but that recovery requires political will, a zero-tolerance approach to corruption and a rejection of empty political theatre.

Asked which parties he would be prepared to enter into a coalition with, Mashaba retorted: ‘Anyone who is committed to fighting corrup-tion and brave enough to deal with the issue of illegal immigrants.’

ELECTIONS