Herman Mashaba, businessman-turned-politician, has announced his resignation from the Democratic Alliance (DA) and as mayor of the City of Johannesburg with effect from 27 November.
Laying the blame at the door of the DA, he said that he was concerned that the party had changed and that the organisation which emerged from the weekend’s Federal Council meeting was not the organisation he had joined.
He was concerned about the criticism his multi-party governance arrangement had attracted from within the DA. He said that since the future of the country was likely to be determined by coalition politics, this was tantamount to rejecting participation in that future. He said that, in his experience, the DA had been the ‘most difficult coalition partner’.
Mashaba also referred to the recent election of Helen Zille as chairperson of the DA’s Federal Council on Sunday. Her election ‘represents a victory for people who stand diametrically opposed to my beliefs and value system’. Race could not be removed from a discussion of the country’s socio-economic problems.
He also charged that some in the DA had tried to ‘undermine my pro-poor agenda in the City of Johannesburg’. He said that he was now being pushed to make a choice between the DA and the country and ‘as a patriot’ he had to put his country first.
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