PETER BRUCE: Mashaba’s park is melting in the dark
By all means clean up Joburg’s parks, but don’t punish harmless small entrepreneurs
The mayor of Johannesburg, Herman Mashaba, may possibly be the most nationally admired leader in the DA. He is recognisable, quirky, eccentric, populist and he doesn’t need the job. Head to head in an election for a South African president he’d give anyone a run for their money. He may have cringeworthy views about immigrants but he at least has a vision about the job he wants to do. He wants to build Johannesburg, draw more businesses into it. Renew it. And he seems to be making the vision real. But, sadly, there’s a darker part to Mashaba’s Johannesburg and I’m not even talking about the litter in the streets around where I live and carry on with my life. I’m talking about people who enrich life in Johannesburg and who, for no good reason, get shut down by the city. One of my favourite songs might have to be rewritten: “Mashaba’s Park is melting in the dark … / Someone left the cake out in the rain / I don’t think I can take it / ’Cause it took so long to bake it / And I’ll never ...
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