By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Caption: ActionSA President, Herman Mashaba at an event held at Newtown Junction to announce the ActionSA Gauteng Premier candidate, Funzi Ngobeni, 29 February 2024. Picture: Neil McCartney.
ActionSA president Herman Mashaba says it is possible to achieve Uhuru in South Africa, but only if we take action on the 29th of May.
Mashaba was speaking on Sunday night at the party’s final campaign and election address in Midrand, north of Johannesburg.
“We are offering a national manifesto informed by expert opinions, studies and the real-life experiences of South Africans. A pragmatic set of solutions to fundamentally change South Africa for the better from the first day we enter government.
“A manifesto informed by the media and political commentators as credible, fellow South Africans, I say it again we are not a party of empty promises and slogans on posters, we are a party of action,” he says, adding poverty, unemployment and the rampant corruption currently plaguing the country and that these must be a thing of the past.
Mashaba said, ActionSA will reintroduce specialised and independent criminal policing units, and specialised courts, to make sure that they put criminals behind bars.
The party will also introduce one department of education which will bring back school inspectors to ensure that quality teaching takes place; they will ensure that principals are appointed on merit – not Sadtu alliances; and will reestablish nursing, teacher and police training colleges.
He added that the economic policy will achieve the South African dream of a non-racial and equal South Africa by igniting job creation through reclaiming abandoned buildings and factories, reforming labour legislation to make it easier for people to enter the job market, and fixing basic service delivery.
Mashaba also said his party wil establish a Universal Basic Income Grant in addition to social grants, and reverse apartheid spatial planning through township infrastructure investment, and safe, clean and subsidized public transport.
ActionSA’s Gauteng Premier candidate, Funzi Ngobeni, on the other hand, says he has a comprehensive plan to fix the many challenges facing the province.
“An Action SA-led Gauteng government will privatise the implementation of innovative and decisive economic policies that enable opportunity and empower businesses to create jobs while working closely with educational institutions to ensure that the next generation is adequately prepared to compete in the global market. Community-based initiatives in sports, arts, culture and recreation will attract local and foreign investment and release finance for much-needed infrastructure development across the province.”
National chairperson, Michael Beaumont, highlighted that South Africa has been run by an incompetent government for far too long.
“The undeniable truth about the last 30 years in our country is that we have been let down by a failed political establishment. Those in government have delivered record levels of unemployment, corruption, crime, load shedding, for millions of young South Africans that have no path to a better future. Those in opposition have presided over this national crisis comfortable and content in being an opposition. That is why the battle lines of this election are not black vs white or young vs old, the battle line of this election is the old vs the new.”
Recent polls and analysts have suggested the ANC could receive less than 50% of the national vote.
That would also be a first for South Africa’s young democracy, which was only established 30 years ago with the first all-race vote that officially ended the apartheid system of racial segregation.
South Africans vote for parties and not directly for their president in national elections. Parties then get seats in Parliament according to their share of the vote and the lawmakers elect the president — which is why the ANC losing its majority would affect the 71-year-old Cyril Ramaphosa’s hopes of being reelected smoothly for a second and final five-year term.
If the ANC goes below 50%, it would likely need an agreement with other parties to have the votes in Parliament to reelect Ramaphosa, once a protege of Mandela.
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Video Courtesy of ActionSA.