Herman Mashaba knows that start-ups are hard. He did, after all, build a multimillion-rand business empire from nothing. That can’t have been easy. Mashaba did not launch and run his start-up in a conducive environment. He did it under apartheid, a system that went out of its way to thwart black people who wanted to start or run businesses.

Now Mashaba’s political start-up, ActionSA, finds itself rocked by reports of infighting, divisions and threats of walkouts. Many of his opponents would no doubt like to see Mashaba’s project fail. I disagree. It would be a tragedy for SA if this start-up crashed and burned. We need ActionSA and any other viable opposition to keep going through to 2024 at the very least. Our country’s future depends on it...