Power FM, Friday afternoon

And our political interests. Thank you very much. Sim Tana, you speak cool. Thank you, Sarasima. Look, there are parties who went and voted people transformers, and yet those people didn't vote for them. Could you please take us into your confidence in terms of what exactly did the ActionSA do? I know you're saying that, Simpson, when you're having conversations with people, were you speaking to different sectors across professionals, etc. What exactly did you do to convince people to vote for you? So the campaign of ActionSA in Tshwane started.

On the 24th of October 2024, every single day I was in communities. Every single day there was something that I was doing for the benefit of people of Tshwane and communicating. You know, they even gave me a cute name and say I'm a content media mayor. It's because of the level of engagement that I did with the city of Tshwane residents that if I'm meeting with someone, the people of Tshwane must know this is what I'm doing with the office that I have.

So that over time being consistent and to a point which was a very interesting engagement, when I do something and they don't approve of it, I would know instantly because you would follow it on social media that they didn't like that I switched off this copies for instance. And so that engagement was in one way, it was two way with the people of Tshwane. But what was important is that every single day there was work that was done, was being communicated. And once in a while, will then

have public meetings. But there was a time in the city I asked residents, can we park public meetings? We already know what is wrong. Can I use the energy and time to make sure and source solutions to the problems that you have? And so we would then go to a community to deliver services instead of public meetings when I'm telling them what was wrong. But one thing that I didn't do was to look for gimmicks in serving the people of Tshwane. I didn't say the solution for the people of Tshwane will be private sectors.

I put the skin in the game and said, City of Tshwane has this amount of resources for this problem. This is how we are doing it. Whoever wants to partner with us must come. And I think you would have seen us building our internal capacity, buying equipment for ourselves and saying this used to be given as a tender to the private sector and it used to cost so much. But now that we've bought our own equipment, these are the savings, then these savings will be redirected this way. And I think people of Tshwane reserve.

Resonated with the day-to-day, and for me, I'm not a complicated person. So, walking communities was not an issue for me. Where you walk the streets to Mark Goko, you introduce yourself and say, Aye, we are here for this Goko. Is there any other thing that we can do for you? And I think they resonated with the day-to-day delivery that is not always cutting ribbons, because that's what politicians are known for. You only see them when they come in to cut the ribbons, you don't see them when the project is going bad, you don't see them when things.

Are not moving just that day of ribbon cutting, all politicians come to the community. And that was not my style. And I think that resonated with them. We, maybe I'm not allowed to say this, but we didn't have resources to campaign. I mean, I think we ran out of budget for t-shirts two months ago. But the people of Tshwane, who resonated with our message, they would wear an ordinary t-shirt and still go and canvass on our behalf. And I think for me, it was the conversations that were happening.