NATASHA MARRIAN: Mashaba’s 2026 gambit: Turning tiny drops into an ocean
ActionSA is absorbing grassroots and ratepayer’s associations as well as independent councillors
17 January 2025 - 05:00
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ActionSA's Herman Mashaba. Picture: Kabelo Mokoena
A disappointing showing in the 2024 election has spurred Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA into action long before the official opening of the 2026 local election season. The party is taking risks to grow its flailing support — large, but calculated, risks.
This week Mashaba announced the merger of his party with the Forum for Service Delivery, drawing in a party with 38 sitting councillors and a mayorship in the troubled Ditsobotla municipality. But this is just the beginning.
ActionSA is canvassing the country to swallow up community-based, grassroots associations, ratepayers’ associations and independent councillors with a relatively stable foothold in councils countrywide, in order to broaden its footprint.
Its presence in local municipalities is now limited to six councils in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. Despite contesting in only six councils in 2021, ActionSA became the country’s fourth-largest party, obtaining more than 500,000 votes in the two provinces.
The merger idea, which arose after an approach to ActionSA by the forum, was strengthened after political developments in neighbouring Botswana where the Umbrella for Democratic Change, an alliance of political parties, swept to victory over the Botswana Democratic Party after 58 years in power.
It is a strategic move that also stems from proposed changes to the Municipal Systems Amendment Act, which moots a threshold for parties to obtain seats in municipal councils. If signed into law, the net effect of the 1% threshold would mean most parties, ratepayers associations and community-based organisations contesting locally would be left out in the cold after the election next year.
A crucial drawcard for potential new ActionSA members is that the party is well resourced and equally well connected in the business community. Talks with the Forum for Service Delivery began in September last year and were tough, but ultimately culminated in an agreement that sees forum leader Mbahare Kekana catapulted into the newly created deputy president position in ActionSA.
The forum, originally an ANC splinter group that was launched in the North West after debilitating factional fights, has itself morphed into an amalgamation of community associations with a footprint in at least six provinces. In October 2023 Kekana announced the merger of the Capricorn Independent Community Activists Forum, the Thabazimbi Residents Association, the Thabazimbi Forum for Service Delivery, the Magoshi Swaranang Movement, and others, with his forum to contest the 2024 election.
While the forum’s performance in the general election was dismal, it had fared better locally in 2021, when it won 38 seats in councils after its activists campaigned with no funding.
Mashaba and his team are now reaching out to business and other funders to aid the troubled Ditsobotla municipality, where the Forum for Service Delivery mayor, Thabo Nkashe, has battled to run the town under severe financial constraints.
While the merger with the Forum for Service Delivery has been announced, ActionSA chair Michael Beaumont told journalists this week that a difficult stretch of road lay ahead. Mashaba and Kekana are now set to canvass the forum’s 42,000-strong membership base and ensure they are all signed on as ActionSA members.
The merger could be dismissed as insignificant if taken in isolation, but should ActionSA win over most groups it is targeting before the 2026 elections it could catapult the party from a mainly Gauteng-based outfit to one with a national footprint in the country’s 257 municipalities.
However, targeting activists already entrenched in communities is a strategic move that could have some drawbacks. The merger could cause resentment within ActionSA itself after an “outsider” was catapulted to the post of deputy president over long-time party insiders who helped Mashaba build the organisation. Complicating matters is that the party does not appear intent on holding an elective conference to formally elect leaders. Positions have thus far been assigned by the party’s central leadership structure, its senate.
Insiders dismiss critique about the dearth of internal democracy in the party, saying it is something that bothers analysts and other opposition parties more than it does the electorate. Perhaps so, but factional fights are bound to emerge in an environment in which outside organisations are being folded in. There are other risks too — such as diluting the internal culture of the organisation and its brand.
But there are also clear potential benefits should Mashaba succeed, the biggest being a strong performance in next year’s election. After ActionSA’s poor showing in the 2024 general election, its strength is clearly in local politics.
Being first off the mark to create an umbrella organisation for small but potentially significant local players that could be locked out next year is a strategic move that could pay off for ActionSA.
Support our award-winning journalism. The Premium package (digital only) is R30 for the first month and thereafter you pay R129 p/m now ad-free for all subscribers.
NATASHA MARRIAN: Mashaba’s 2026 gambit: Turning tiny drops into an ocean
ActionSA is absorbing grassroots and ratepayer’s associations as well as independent councillors
A disappointing showing in the 2024 election has spurred Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA into action long before the official opening of the 2026 local election season. The party is taking risks to grow its flailing support — large, but calculated, risks.
This week Mashaba announced the merger of his party with the Forum for Service Delivery, drawing in a party with 38 sitting councillors and a mayorship in the troubled Ditsobotla municipality. But this is just the beginning.
ActionSA is canvassing the country to swallow up community-based, grassroots associations, ratepayers’ associations and independent councillors with a relatively stable foothold in councils countrywide, in order to broaden its footprint.
Its presence in local municipalities is now limited to six councils in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. Despite contesting in only six councils in 2021, ActionSA became the country’s fourth-largest party, obtaining more than 500,000 votes in the two provinces.
The merger idea, which arose after an approach to ActionSA by the forum, was strengthened after political developments in neighbouring Botswana where the Umbrella for Democratic Change, an alliance of political parties, swept to victory over the Botswana Democratic Party after 58 years in power.
It is a strategic move that also stems from proposed changes to the Municipal Systems Amendment Act, which moots a threshold for parties to obtain seats in municipal councils. If signed into law, the net effect of the 1% threshold would mean most parties, ratepayers associations and community-based organisations contesting locally would be left out in the cold after the election next year.
A crucial drawcard for potential new ActionSA members is that the party is well resourced and equally well connected in the business community. Talks with the Forum for Service Delivery began in September last year and were tough, but ultimately culminated in an agreement that sees forum leader Mbahare Kekana catapulted into the newly created deputy president position in ActionSA.
The forum, originally an ANC splinter group that was launched in the North West after debilitating factional fights, has itself morphed into an amalgamation of community associations with a footprint in at least six provinces. In October 2023 Kekana announced the merger of the Capricorn Independent Community Activists Forum, the Thabazimbi Residents Association, the Thabazimbi Forum for Service Delivery, the Magoshi Swaranang Movement, and others, with his forum to contest the 2024 election.
While the forum’s performance in the general election was dismal, it had fared better locally in 2021, when it won 38 seats in councils after its activists campaigned with no funding.
Mashaba and his team are now reaching out to business and other funders to aid the troubled Ditsobotla municipality, where the Forum for Service Delivery mayor, Thabo Nkashe, has battled to run the town under severe financial constraints.
While the merger with the Forum for Service Delivery has been announced, ActionSA chair Michael Beaumont told journalists this week that a difficult stretch of road lay ahead. Mashaba and Kekana are now set to canvass the forum’s 42,000-strong membership base and ensure they are all signed on as ActionSA members.
The merger could be dismissed as insignificant if taken in isolation, but should ActionSA win over most groups it is targeting before the 2026 elections it could catapult the party from a mainly Gauteng-based outfit to one with a national footprint in the country’s 257 municipalities.
However, targeting activists already entrenched in communities is a strategic move that could have some drawbacks. The merger could cause resentment within ActionSA itself after an “outsider” was catapulted to the post of deputy president over long-time party insiders who helped Mashaba build the organisation. Complicating matters is that the party does not appear intent on holding an elective conference to formally elect leaders. Positions have thus far been assigned by the party’s central leadership structure, its senate.
Insiders dismiss critique about the dearth of internal democracy in the party, saying it is something that bothers analysts and other opposition parties more than it does the electorate. Perhaps so, but factional fights are bound to emerge in an environment in which outside organisations are being folded in. There are other risks too — such as diluting the internal culture of the organisation and its brand.
But there are also clear potential benefits should Mashaba succeed, the biggest being a strong performance in next year’s election. After ActionSA’s poor showing in the 2024 general election, its strength is clearly in local politics.
Being first off the mark to create an umbrella organisation for small but potentially significant local players that could be locked out next year is a strategic move that could pay off for ActionSA.
• Marrian is Business Day editor-at-large.
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