Former Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba confirmed this week that he will be forming a new political party whose official launch will be announced at the end of June.
Mashaba has been running the people’s dialogue since December 6 and calls the movement the building block of this party.The dialogue will end next month, giving Mashaba a month to tally the findings and release a final report to the public in March.
“I have given a commitment that we will run these dialogues until the end of February so that by the end of March, at the latest, we produce a report that will inform us what South Africans are looking for. The report will be made public for all to see,” Mashaba said.
He refused to comment when he was asked if the former DA leader Mmusi Maimane would be joining him but he confirmed that the party will definitely be participating in the 2021 local government election
Harman Mashaba says he wants to build an organisation that is driven by civil society and free of political self interest. Former DA federal chairperson Athol Trollip, who resigned alongside Maimane last year, said although he was of the view that “there is no need for more political parties” in the country’s already congested political landscape, he thought the fact that Mashaba was going back to the ordinary people and taking a mandate from them was a noble and much-needed change in direction from where politics has been headed lately.
