Monday, 24 August 2026

Herman Mashaba said Action SA would return him to Johannesburg’s mayoral office on 4 November and use it to tackle inner-city decay, service failures and what he called years of instability under coalition rule.

Mashaba vowed to collapse City Power, Joburg Water and JPC into leaner structures, end labour-broking, and insource more cleaners, security staff and technical workers to build long-term municipal capacity.

He said undocumented foreign nationals would not be welcome in Action SA-run municipalities, promising a special unit to find them daily and hand them to Home Affairs for deportation.

Political analyst Sandy Leswana said the ANC’s manifesto read like a familiar checklist, but the real problem was weak leadership, factionalism, and the lack of clean links between manifestos, IDPs and performance contracts.

John Clark warned that whistleblower protection remains largely lip service, saying systemic corruption makes reform hard and arguing South Africa needs role models and stronger criminal justice structures to protect truth-tellers.