'I couldn't leave my country to hyenas': Herman Mashaba hits back at suggestions he is a 'front'

ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba has hit back at suggestions he is not the real leader and founder of the party, but rather a front.

During a fiery exchange with a Twitter user on Thursday, Mashaba was asked who the “real founder of ActionSA” is.

The former Johannesburg mayor did not take kindly to the insinuation he is a front, saying he would not have used his money to fund someone else's vision.

“You have to be a special kind of smart to believe that I would leave a successful business career, use my own money to build a political party, only to be a front for someone else,” he responded. 

“Politics was the last thing on earth I wanted to be involved in, but I couldn't watch on in silence as this criminal syndicate called ANC destroyed SA. Our children will never forgive us if we do nothing,” he wrote in another tweet. 

Mashaba responded to a similar question from Zimbabwean journalist Hopewell Chin’ono earlier in the week.

Chin’ono shared a picture of ActionSA’s leadership with the caption “dear South Africans, I come in peace. Who is in charge?”

Mashaba responded: “please don’t impose your inferiority complex on me. There are so many challenges in Zimbabwe, why don’t you start there?

“Perhaps this is why it has been so hard to turn Zim around when ‘award-winning journalists’ find it so easy to support racialised misinformation campaigns.”

Chin’ono claimed his question had nothing to do with race, and said Mashaba’s response exposed the ActionSA leader’s alleged “insecurities” on the topic.

“I was asking who was in charge because you were the face of the campaign, yet the picture that did rounds had other folks taking centre stage. Are you in charge?” he asked.

Mashaba responded, saying a depth of leadership was “a hallmark of democracy” and urged Chin’ono to “take notes”. 

“We are working to fix our country. Work to fix yours. Charity begins at home,” he added.

Mashaba resigned from the DA in October 2019 and founded 'The People's Dialogue' and subsequently ActionSA in August last year.

In the recent local government elections, the new party contested government in six municipalities and garnered 90 seats nationally.

ActionSA will soon engage in coalition talks with several political parties, Mashaba said earlier this week.