Instead of getting carried away with the ANC’s faction fights and leadership contest in December, South Africans should rather pay attention to who will be in charge of the country after the ANC’s expected drubbing in 2024.
As things stand, it may well be ActionSA rather than the DA or EFF determining the new coalition politics. Bongani Baloyi joining the party has added new impetus to ActionSA’s growth and more black DA leaders may soon follow suit. The talented Baloyi, 34, successfully ran the Midvaal municipality for two terms as DA mayor.
Increasingly traditional DA donors are shifting their rands to ActionSA in the hope that it will make a bigger impact on voters. One of these donors told me his and his friends’ patience is wearing thin with the DA. “Their obsession with ideological purity and side issues such as critical race theory and wokeness and bickering on social media has made them lose focus on that which made people like me give them big money: to recruit enough black and brown voters to remove the ANC.”
Business people like ActionSA’s slogan of “pro poor, pro business” as well as its emphasis on service delivery and solutions rather than ideological and endless policy debates.
Baloyi is a big catch for ActionSA. He is the future of a new, stable political system: black, young, competent, corruption-free, committed and pragmatic.
ActionSA has suddenly become much more attractive to the DA’s remaining black leaders; people such as the MPs Siviwe Gwarube, 32, and Solly Malatsi, 37, as well as the Gauteng MPL Makashule Gana, 38. ActionSA is also eyeing the DA’s Johannesburg mayor Mpho Phalatse.
Here comes ActionSA, plus five talking points from ‘Vrye Weekblad’
Here’s what’s hot in the latest edition of the Afrikaans digital weekly
Image: Veli Nhlapo
Instead of getting carried away with the ANC’s faction fights and leadership contest in December, South Africans should rather pay attention to who will be in charge of the country after the ANC’s expected drubbing in 2024.
As things stand, it may well be ActionSA rather than the DA or EFF determining the new coalition politics. Bongani Baloyi joining the party has added new impetus to ActionSA’s growth and more black DA leaders may soon follow suit. The talented Baloyi, 34, successfully ran the Midvaal municipality for two terms as DA mayor.
Increasingly traditional DA donors are shifting their rands to ActionSA in the hope that it will make a bigger impact on voters. One of these donors told me his and his friends’ patience is wearing thin with the DA. “Their obsession with ideological purity and side issues such as critical race theory and wokeness and bickering on social media has made them lose focus on that which made people like me give them big money: to recruit enough black and brown voters to remove the ANC.”
Business people like ActionSA’s slogan of “pro poor, pro business” as well as its emphasis on service delivery and solutions rather than ideological and endless policy debates.
Baloyi is a big catch for ActionSA. He is the future of a new, stable political system: black, young, competent, corruption-free, committed and pragmatic.
ActionSA has suddenly become much more attractive to the DA’s remaining black leaders; people such as the MPs Siviwe Gwarube, 32, and Solly Malatsi, 37, as well as the Gauteng MPL Makashule Gana, 38. ActionSA is also eyeing the DA’s Johannesburg mayor Mpho Phalatse.
Strategists in ActionSA believe smaller parties like Good Party and COPE can be usurped before 2024. They also predict that a significant number of white voters who are dissatisfied with the DA’s plodding and ideological infighting will vote ActionSA in the next elections.
ActionSA challenges liberation rhetoric: they are opposed to cadre deployment, race quotas, patronage and expropriation without compensation. Labour legislation should be relaxed, bureaucratic red tape eliminated, the state should only intervene when the market fails and to manage public assets for the entire community, and it should be easier and cheaper to do business.
Party leader Herman Mashaba’s flirtation with populist issues such as illegal immigrants and the death penalty may be popular, but his co-leaders and the party’s senate have to see to it that he does not go too far.
Read the full article, and more news, analysis and interviews in this Friday’s edition of Vrye Weekblad.
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