The CEO of the South African Housing and Infrastructure Fund and President of the new political party, MOVE SA, Rali Mampeule, has joined the hotly-contested race for Mayor of the City of Johannesburg. In this interview with Chris Steyn, he expresses confidence that he can duplicate in the public sector what he has achieved in the private sector. “In the last six years, through my fund, The South African Housing and Infrastructure Fund, we have delivered more than 68,000 land housing opportunities. …Let's compare that with what the mayor of Ekurhuleni has done in the last five years. I don't think you can match that…We've delivered eleven thousand six hundred and forty jobs through the SAHIF Fund (and) through my investment in a company called MetroFibre, which I bought from Patrice Motsepe, we have connected more than 500,000 households with fast Internet... We've taken more than 100,000 kids to school through the Mampeule Foundation…So we've done it - and we think we can do it better with a better budget from the public sector.” Mampeule advocates a brand of “fearless politics” to rid South Africa of the cadres and the comrades: “And we can go and dance with them in court. We are not scared of them. We're gonna fire the cadre deployees that don't know what they are doing.”.Listen here.Edited transcript of the interview.Chris Steyn (00:00.961)New party MOVE SA is also fielding a mayoral candidate in the hotly-contested Johannesburg. With me is Move SA president, Mr. Rali Mampeule. Welcome, Sir.Rali Mampeule (00:14.104)Yes, thank you. Thank you for inviting us to BizNews. Greetings, Chris and to your viewers as well.Chris Steyn (00:21.699)You're welcome. MOVE SA wants to do politics differently in Gauteng. How are you going to go about that?Rali Mampeule (00:31.342)First of all, we are tired of the cadres. We are tired of the comrades. We are tired of people that did not look after our people for many years now. Chris, in South Africa, just under 68% of South Africans' children only have one surname of their mother. Obviously that comes from different reasons, but one of them being the fact that there's been challenges in terms of the economic development of this country. The current governments have not looked after our people. We have a broken society. That's why we are seeing people just walking into a tavern and killing people with AK-47, killing 27 people in one go. Our international friends sent us this clip for them. It's like, what the hell is this? And our people are struggling. But us as business, and I'm saying us because I come from the business world and I'm now going to donate my time to be in the public service of our people. We are seeing that it's taking seven years to just get a development to be approved, Chris. I was speaking to somebody who is in the listed space, the CEO of a listed company, told me that one of his shopping centres has taken him 18 years to be completed because the municipalities have got no capacity, they don't understand, they don't know what they're doing. So we said from just us complaining, let us come and help our people. You know, if your cleaning lady is not at home and the dishes are dirty, Chris,... you go and you wash the dishes. So I'm giving myself a bit of time to come and do some public service and help our municipality to approve plans.In Kigali, it takes three days, 90 days rather, to approve a development. Why should it take us 18 years? Things are not correct. Our people are struggling, and we need to come…and help our people. The private sector has done this before. We have developed places like Waterfall.///the private sector has developed more new cities than government has done. And we say instead of pointing fingers, Chris, let us come as the private sector,Rali Mampeule (02:58.526)..as property developers come and help our South African public and government with infrastructure development.And that's one of the reasons why I'm here to see if we can accelerate delivery of affordable housing in South Africa while we're connecting our people with the Internet. We want a child here in Alexandra to connect with a child in Zurich with fast Internet. We can do that. And that's why we came to the space to say, let us come and serve our people. And we have done it in the private sector.Chris Steyn (03:28.521)You are also contesting in Ekurhuleng, Emfuleni, Sedibeng, why would voters believe that a relatively new party would be able to govern at such a high level?Rali Mampeule (03:40.809)Chris, in the last six years, through my fund that I've been involved in, called The South African Housing and Infrastructure Fund, we have delivered more than 68,000 land housing opportunities. …Let's compare that with what the mayor of Ekurhuleni has done in the last five years. I don't think you can match that. Secondly, through my investment in a company called MetroFibre, which I bought from Patrice Motsepe, that investment in the digital infrastructure, we have connected more than 500,000 households with fast Internet. And I was one of the first people to fight on that board that we make sure that we connect even the people that cannot afford the Internet. So I've done it before. We've taken more than 100,000 kids to school through the Mampeule Foundation. And we also have supported there in Cape Town, Chris, Green Riders that has got 2,000, 2,500 young people who are delivering pizzas today, earning an average of R13,000 a month. So we've done it in the private sector. We've helped in the health space where we are the founding donor of the Global Surgery Foundation, where we are saying no woman should die giving birth because I had lost my sister in one of the hospitals where they didn't…she had high blood and sugar and she was not supposed to deliver a child naturally and there was no facility, no theater. And I said a couple of years later when I sold one of our businesses, I then said, Chris, what can we do? Our Global Surgery Foundation, GSF, is now based in Switzerland. We have other people that have in other countries that have now invested in that fund, and is now buildingclinics and hospitals in places like Kenya. And I told them they must come to South Africa and build one as well. So we've done it, and we don't wanna talk too much about that, but we are not saying we are going to do something. We have done it, and we have an exposure in infrastructure development through digital infrastructure development and normal housing building, where we've delivered eleven thousand six hundred and forty jobs through the SAHIF Fund. So we've done it and we think we can do it better with a better budget from the public sector.Chris Steyn (06:07.577)You've spoken about people feeling shut out from really important decisions affecting their daily lives. Were you to be elected, in your first 100 days in office, how would you convince people that power has moved closer to the community?Rali Mampeule (06:25.157)So first thing first thing that we're gonna do is to come up with this with a way of how we monitor service delivery, Chris. Part of what we do is that we've got three pillars that we stand by. And those three pillars, you know, in Afrikaans, you've got the driepoot pot with those three legs. One of them says, you know, good governance. So we're tired of corruption. So we'll make sure that we fire those that are doing corruption. We fire those that are not managing the finances of the cities with immediate effect. And we can go and dance with them in court. We are not scared of them. We're gonna fire the cadre deployees that don't know what they are doing. We wanna make sure that we can be able to give services to our people to say our candidate councillor in Ekurhleni, in Daveyton, in…every 90 days you must be able to give a feedback electronically to say if Jabu there is servicing you or not, and if it's not servicing you, we must go to the by-elections. So those are the things that we're gonna sign up for in the first hundred days. We're also gonna make sure that in the first hundred days, we make sure that all the entrepreneurs that are owed money, which is one of our pillars. The second pillar is about economic development. We're of the view that government at any given time owes entrepreneurs more than forty-five billion rands, so then alone fourteen billion rands owed to entrepreneurs. How do you then say you are creating a conducive environment if you're not paying those entrepreneurs? And beyond the invoice that is not paid, it's a divorce, it's a child who's been expelled to school, it's a salary that's not been paid. So we'll then make sure that we stop breaking the nation that is already broken with 68% of no fathers. Those are some of the people that will be given guns to come and shoot people because we are a broken society. We need to fix that. And lastly, we want to make sure that we have…the last leg is service delivery and housing. We're saying that when it comes to housing, we've built and we've accelerated delivery of affordable housing in the country. I've spoken about that earlier. And we say housing doesn't just come as a house. Housing must come with electricity that works. Housing must be able to come with the road that takes you to the house. Housing should not be far away from where you work.Rali Mampeule (08:47.148)Forty percent of our people spend forty percent of their income on transportation, Chris. They stay in a forty square meter house, Chris. They stay forty kilometers away from where they work. So we call that the forty, forty, forty. So we wanna make sure that we can start having plans, approve developments that are closer to where our people are working.But one of the first things that we want to highlight is that we're going to sit there with all the CFOs of departments, municipalities, and just pay our people that are genuinely due to be paid their money. That's what we're going to do because that will unlock value, that will create jobs, and that will make sure that as part and parcel of our economic development leg, we start getting people to work. Because, you know, companies have closed down because government is not paying the entrepreneurs.Chris Steyn (09:39.833)We've seen that the City of Johannesburg is practically bankrupt. So how are you going to pay for these things that do need to be done urgently?Rali Mampeule (09:48.896)I think it's a good question. You know, we always say that we need to take the City of Johannesburg back into the world-class African city that it deserved to be. And based on that, there are opportunities where we can be able to bring other investors.I had an opportunity to do my studies at Harvard University, did my Master's level degree in real estate, and we've got a lot of networks of people that want to come here and build data centres, do developments, but they are told that. It takes seven years, takes eighteen years… So we need to remember, Chris, that Johannesburg, the world and the investors are looking at the whole world, not just the City of Johannesburg. We need to then ask ourselves to say, what are we gonna do to attract that investor that is coming from anywhere in the world to come to the City of Johannesburg versus them going to Rwanda? Those are the challenges that we need to have. Part of what we're gonna do is to make sure that South Africa in general, as we go to 2029 election, becomes like a city, like Singapore, you know, in terms of how they've managed their things, how they've attracted investments into their country. And we'll use the same model in the city of Johannesburg to deal with corruption and be able to attract investors. The infrastructure is already here. We can just upgrade the infrastructure.But you know, Chris, one of the things that I have is a challenge and I was one of the people that were against the PIC. And I'm very happy that to date there are four executives, including the Deputy Minister of Finance, who has resigned there because of me becoming a whistleblower. Part of that was caused by the fact that I was involved in whistleblowing there and everything unfolded to a point where the whole board had to resign.But one of the things that we're gonna do is to make sure that we go to the PIC. We must put our money where our mouth is. We need to get the pension fund to start putting a portion of the money to invest in the cities like Johannesburg, in the city of Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni. And then we match that with offshore investment. Foreign direct investment is very, very critical, and we can be able to do that. So we're gonna be able to do that by attracting investors, by convincing…Rali Mampeule (12:08.151)…pension fund…the same workers are the ones that are staying in those cities in the buildings that are not in good standard. So we want them to become the first seed funders and we can be able to attract more investments. And I think its possible.Chris Steyn (12:22.583)I don't have to tell you how many people have lost faith in the big political parties and every time a new party comes along people feel hopeful again. But how will they be able to hold you accountable?Rali Mampeule (12:34.714)You know, as I said earlier on, Chris, you know, as we walk in Diepsloot and places, you see young people who tell you, Listen, I'm here in Hillbrow now. I've been here, I come from KZN, I came to the city of Gold to achieve my dreams. But I'm staying in a building that has not had electricity for more than a year. We try and give hope to our people who in Daveyton, say we're not gonna vote. We're just not going to vote. We are giving them hope to say if you don't vote, you're gonna have the same cadres and the same comrades continue to give your life that you are currently living. We want to make sure that we can bring hope back to our people. And genuinely, we want to create a political party and a government that the people can feel their part and parcel of. One of the concepts that we do is to say, Rali Mampeula cannot come and solve all your problems. Our current slogan now, Chris, says lead local, fearless politics. We are saying we want…Not people to come and say, I promised them to do A, B, C, D. We want that gogo that does the soup kitchen on Wednesdays, she's a champion already. We want to take her and train her to understand politics, public savings, and make sure that she's the one that can solve the problem themselves. We want that old man, that father, that uncle who goes and does a petition to say the street lights are not working. We want to take that person and train them and make them know that they can be fearless and sort out their own challenges. So we don't want to come and promise people. We also listen to people and create our own, what most people call a manifesto. We call it a mandate from the people, we call it an agenda, and we call our manifesto an agenda. But these are issues that directly come from the people themselves. To say, in Davetton, they're crying about having a shopping centre. For you and I, we've got 13 shopping centers around ourselves. So we listen to the people of Daveyton and provide it for them. And make sure that they don't spend R60 Rands to get on a taxi to go buy bread. In Diepsloot, they say 60% of them are paying for electricity. But the City of Johannesburg comes and cut off their transformers, and everyone, including those that are on an oxygen machine that requires electricity, get cut off. So we will want them to solve the problem by training them and giving them a platform and a vehicle to be able to do that.Gone are the days where politicians come to their area and ask them to vote for them. We are saying….Rali Mampeule (14:58.409)Let us lead local and let the local champions come and sort their problems out. We don't call ourselves cadres and comrades. We call ourselves champions. We're talking politics, Chris. We're talking politics of bread and butter, you know, because those are the issues where our people may not even listen to this interview between you and I because it's expensive for them to be online. So there needs to be a sense of agency. There's cadres, there's comrades, don't have a sense of agency. They just take a file, put it on the ground there and don't do anything about it. And then seven years are gone. People's lives are gone. We are saying that we don't even need five years. We can solve these things within a very short space. Let us have a sense of urgency to change people's lives. With the high rate of unemployment in the City of Johannesburg, with more than 500,000 people staying in informal settlements. It can't be. You cannot have 350 different informal settlements in a city like Johannesburg, in a country and in a city where we're talking that is one of the richest cities.We want to tell our people that we'll work on a higher level to make the City of Johannesburg work. The economy of Johannesburg alone, Chris, GDP is as big as the country Ghana. So if we can make the City of Johannesburg work efficiently, well managed, with less corruption, we'll be able to unlock value for a lot of cities, including Cape Town and the whole of South Africa. And when Johannesburg is working, the whole continent will be able to work. We need to make those things and it can happen. But we're saying that the hope that has been lost must come back and the community themselves must help us to get rid of this cadres.Chris Steyn (16:44.099)Thank you. That was MOVE SA President Mr. Rali Mampuele speaking to BizNews. I'm Chris Steyn. Thank you,Rali Mampeule (16:52.375)Thank you very much, Chris. 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