With all the developments taking place around the world, the local election results in South Africa would not normally command much attention. Yet the municipal elections held in that country last month were rather different.
Recently, the African National Congress has taken power for granted. There has been the depressing assumption that whatever the level of corruption or mismanagement, the black majority in South Africa would remain loyal to the Party. In rural areas the ANC has remained dominant.
But in these elections there has been a breakthrough for the opposition, Democratic Alliance (DA), in the cities. The DA has taken charge of the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality – which includes the city of Port Elizabeth. It has also taken control of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality – which is centred in Pretoria. The DA retained power in Cape Town.
What could well prove the most significant result however is the election of Herman Mashaba, a DA member, as the Mayor of Johannesburg, South Africa’s biggest city.
Mashaba is a libertarian – he believes that the path to prosperity and new jobs is through individual freedom and the wealth creation of free enterprise. This means lifting the burdens of bureaucracy and taxation which keep people impoverished. His radical approach includes opposition to minimum wage rules.
Mahatma Gandhi is often quoted as saying: “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” It is certainly a principle applied by Mashaba. He was born in poverty, but even before the apartheid system had ended, he had established himself as one of the country’s leading black entrepreneurs with his hair products company, Black Like Me. He said “In the dark days of Apartheid, the government did everything to
prevent a black person from succeeding. I did not let any of that stop me”.
Johannesburg has continuously had an ANC Mayor since 1994. Doubtless the impeccable credentials in Mashaba’s “back story” helped persuade many to give him a chance.
The South African paper, Globe and Mail, reports: “Mr. Mashaba is already energetically putting his free-market ideas into action. He is distributing thousands of title deeds to impoverished residents, trying to create a new class of landowners. He is plotting with private developers to turn the city into a vast construction site, and he is pledging to use small businesses to slash the unemployment rate”.
Mashaba eschews the caution of a career politician. He says if he fails to cut the unemployment rate from the current 31 per cent to below 20 per cent then voters should throw him out. He says: “I am saying to the investment community, ‘If you want to make money, come to the city of Johannesburg’. I can unblock any bottlenecks”.
In his inaugural speech he pledged that surplus state owned buildings will be sold for housing and “affordable commercial spaces for small businesses and shops to reverse the Inner City’s decline”. He added: “I am often criticized by my political opponents for not caring for the poor, for not understanding their plight. This could not be further from the truth. I grew up in poverty. I remember having to drink water to stave off the hunger. My father died when I was two years old and my mother was a domestic worker in Johannesburg, raising other people’s children, while my sisters and I were lucky to see her once a month.”
He pledged to end the corruption where a party membership card is the way to get a job or a Government contract. He says he will restore the rule of law as “a City without respect for its laws cannot be a City of prosperity which protects its residents.”
Of course none of this means that Herman Mashaba will succeed. However inspirational a figure he may be, and however valid his ideas, there will be plenty of obstacles. Often businessmen entering politics find the transition frustrating and struggle to adapt. There will be vested interests in the bureaucracy that will resist losing the benefits that corruption has brought them.
There is a defiant individualism in his message: “My life is not shaped by other people. If I had allowed other people to shape my life I would not have started my business when, by law as a black man, I was not allowed to start a business.”
But politics is generally a team sport. Many in his own Party are nervous of some of Mashaba’s bolder ambitions. Further, his Party does not have a majority in his City. Ironically he relied on backing from a far left Party, the Economic Freedom Fighters, who were determined to see the ANC ousted.
So the odds are challenging. But the prize would be great. Potentially, not just for his city but for his country. Indeed, his example might attract attention from the rest of the continent and the rest of the world. After all, the failure of Socialism, whether in Venezuela, North Korea or Zimbabwe, is something of which we are all too grimly reminded. Let’s hope that Johannesburg will come to embody
an alternative vision of how freedom can work.