Future of ActionSA and its changing political identity

Despite the current focus on the African National Congress (ANC) and the Democratic Alliance (DA) ahead of the local elections, ActionSA believes it too can play a big role. But with its participation in marches against illegal immigrants, its support for a mayoral candidate facing criminal charges and its role in Tshwane, its political identity may be changing.

When Herman Mashaba launched ActionSA it seemed obvious the party was more likely to work with the DA than anyone else.

Both he and the party’s other most visible leader, Micheal Beaumont, were from that party. So were several other leaders who eventually joined them. And the party’s membership profile, of a diverse but largely middle-class party, seemed more similar to the DA’s than the ANC’s. Or certainly the ANC just after the leadership of Jacob Zuma.

However, over time, the two parties have drifted apart. The current animus between Mashaba and the DA, and in particular against Helen Zille, seems almost personal.

ActionSA on illegal immigrants

Meanwhile, ActionSA seems to be moving away from what could be called a “DA constituency”. Last week Mashaba joined the March and March movement during a protest in Durban. This group has held regular protests that it says are against immigrants who are in the country illegally.

Just two months ago members attempted to blockade a local school that they said had a high number of learners who were the children of illegal immigrants.

This resulted in police having to escort young children from school as members of the group screamed and shouted.

Mashaba’s language about illegal immigrants, that there should be “mass deportations” of illegal immigrants, suggests this is going to be a core message during this local election.

Beaumont, however, disagrees. He told Daily Maverick during a tea break at the party’s strategy planning meeting that “illegal immigration has always been a hallmark of ActionSA’s messaging, but we are very alive to the reality that the biggest issues statistically is broken services, and jobs and the economy. And we’re very clear on that.”

ActionSA in Tshwane

“Our message on local elections is about to be that we fix what other people have broken,” he said. While that may be the party’s message, the fact is ActionSA is also keeping the ANC in power in Tshwane.

While the ActionSA’s Nasiphi Moya leads that council as mayor, it is only through the ANC in both the mayoral committee and the council that she can govern.

Cynics might suggest she is being used by the ANC simply to retain their power. This also means that the ANC’s Tshwane regional chair, Eugene Modise, remains as deputy mayor.

He is accused of benefiting from a security contract issued by the council to a security company that he started. The risk to ActionSA is obvious; it says it wants to “fix things”, and yet it’s empowering people who are benefiting from alleged corruption to remain in office.

Again, Beaumont denied this. He said Modise “divested from that company before becoming a councillor. The forensic report only deals with the benefit he derives from owning the property that the services are tendered from.

“It’s important to point out they were awarded under a DA government of the past. There is no protection. […] The council has approved a multi-party committee that has 90 days to investigate,” he said.

While the facts and technicalities matter, ahead of an election, perceptions matter more.

“There is an artificial narrative that there are good guys and bad guys and that applies to the colour of their party T-shirts,” Beaumont said. “We were worried about damage to the ActionSA brand when a council led by the DA gave a tender to Edwin Sodi that resulted in people in Hammanskraal getting cholera. We don’t like working with any of these parties; we think the records of many of these parties stink. But in this situation we need to make decisions based on what’s best. And there is no question that the current coalition, led by ActionSA, is giving much better results than the coalition led by the DA.”

While Beaumont may be correct that there are no real “good guys and bad guys”, that’s not how voters might see it. They might well simply see the corruption headlines around Modise and conclude ActionSA is allowing him to retain his power.

This might well be deepened by the decision by Moya to formally remove ActionSA councillor Kholofelo Morodi from the mayoral committee (this was announced after our interview with Beaumont and presumably once he had rejoined their strategy session).

It follows testimony at the Madlanga Commission that Morodi was involved in parcelling out tenders. For some voters, this might well look like a continuation of how the ANC is perceived to govern.

ActionSA’s controversial candidate

Then there is the party’s decision to nominate Xolani Khumalo as its mayoral candidate in Ekurhuleni. While Khumalo has immense name recognition from his television show, it is also clear he is no stranger to violence. Viewers of his programme will have their own views on how drugs dealers he and his team visited suddenly came to confess their crimes.

ActionSA has claimed that an assault charge against Khumalo is “politically motivated”. Beaumont said Khumalo is like many other people who have tried to blow the whistle on crime, only to find the police are turned against them and, that “communities in Ekurhuleni rely on people like Khumalo to be the heroes they can’t all be”.

But the court has heard testimony about how Khumalo and his team allegedly woke up an alleged victim in the dead of night, pointed guns at him and then slapped him.

This may be popular with many communities, but it is obviously still illegal. And always will be. The risk for ActionSA is that it is supporting someone who uses violence. While this might be popular, it is also the very definition of populism.

This may well alienate some people who have supported the party up until this point.

It has been mentioned before that one of the unique strengths of ActionSA was that it could win the support of people who had supported both the DA and the ANC.

And this writer has suggested it played a pioneering role in what one day might be an important multiracial political identity in South Africa.

But by talking about “mass deportations”, supporting the ANC in Tshwane and having a candidate who is regularly accused of violence, its political identity may be changing.

It is not clear if there is a strong political future by aligning yourself with the ANC, no matter the rights and wrongs of a particular council during a particular time.

And, while ActionSA’s political identity might be changing, it has one major weakness which has threatened its long-term existence from the beginning, and has not yet been rectified.

It is one of the many smaller parties in our politics that have not changed leadership through contested elections.

So far, no party has won more than 20% of the vote in any election without going through that process (the only parties that have are the ANC and the DA).

ActionSA would have to either hold leadership elections or make political history to overcome this.

When ActionSA first burst onto the political scene, many people welcomed what they saw as a fresh new voice. This election could well determine whether it is able to live up to that, or fall back with a long list of parties that last just one or two electoral cycles. DM