'Never!' Herman Mashaba slams suggestion he should've joined the EFF

ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba said on Thursday he could never join his political opponents, the EFF.

With less than two weeks left until the local government elections on November 1, Mashaba responded to a tweet by a user who said he should have joined the red berets and contested the Johannesburg mayoral position.

“This thing of different parties pulling in different angles is confusing for the voter,” read the tweet.

The former Johannesburg mayor resigned from the DA in 2019 and formed “The People's Dialogue”, a platform through which he engaged South Africans on social and political issues. In August 2020, he launched ActionSA and announced he would be contesting the upcoming election.

“I am a proponent and personally proof of the power of the free market, I believe the private sector should play a more central role in economic growth, and respect for the rule of law is non-negotiable for me,” Mashaba responded.

He also said he is committed to building a nonracial SA, “a society grounded on social cohesion”.

He did, however, not shut the door on the idea of a collaboration with the EFF, or other parties, if strict conditions and rules were in place.

“I will continue to work with any other party that puts the interests of residents first, and their politics last. This excludes the ANC, which only exists to serve itself.

“Any coalition agreement will never be an open-ended coalition agreement. There will be strict and enforced conditions that I will be happy to make public to the people of SA,” he said.

On Wednesday, Mashaba shared a video of EFF leader Julius Malema calling for open borders on the African continent, saying he would never support the idea.

Malema made the calls in January when international travel was restricted, with limited land borders open. 

Malema encouraged foreign nationals seeking entry into SA to “find creative ways” if the government continued to deny them entry.

“I will never support this nonsense of open borders! As Action SA, we want the people of the world to come to SA, but they must come here legally, and when here, they must respect our laws,” he said. 

Meanwhile, ActionSA battled it out in court with the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) on Thursday in its bid to force the commission to amend the ballot papers to reflect the party's name. 

During a virtual hearing,  advocate Adila Hassim, representing the party, proposed that stamps or stickers of the party’s name be placed next to its logo if ballot papers could not be reprinted given the remaining time. Judgment was reserved.

This battle comes after the IEC refused to amend the ballot papers which only showed ActionSA's logo and not its name. The commission said ActionSA was to blame as the party had failed to include an abbreviation or acronym during the registration.