Helendorsement: Mashele’s volte face on Zille - John Matisonn

Key topics:Mashele backs Zille for mayor, reversing past criticism of herHe slams ANC for destroying Johannesburg, urges urgent changePredicts ANC drop below 30% in 2029, calls GNU “government of enemies”.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.The auditorium doors will open for BNIC#2 on 10 September 2025 in Hermanus. For more information and tickets, click here..Watch the full SMWX Prince Mashele interview below.By John Matisonn.In an early boost to her mayoral campaign, prominent South African political scientist Prince Mashele has announced that he will publicly endorse Helen Zille for mayor of Johannesburg if she wins her party’s nomination. Despite being chairperson of the Democratic Alliance federal council, a successful former Cape Town mayor, and former party leader, Zille is undergoing the same vetting process as other candidates, culminating in a final interview.Mashele’s endorsement is a significant early step in Zille’s effort to prove she can draw new black votes to the DA in the city where she was born and spent her formative years, before building her political career in the minority-dominated Western Cape.Mashele is a respected and independent minded academic, though he attracted controversy when it emerged that a book he wrote about Action South Africa leader Herman Mashaba was lavishly funded by Mashaba. In his defence, Mashele insisted Mashaba had no control of the content and he remains comfortable that his independent judgement is apparent in the text. His decision to endorse Zille marks a reversal of the position he took only three years ago in an article entitled “No-one can save out-of-touch with reality granny Zille.”But this week he told the podcast SMWX: “I am not a supporter of the DA and I am very clear, if Helen Zille wins the contest to become the mayoral candidate of Johannesburg, I am going to do something I have never done in my life. I am going to publicly endorse her for mayor of Johannesburg, with a heavy heart…"The ANC has destroyed Johannesburg. Johannesburg used to be the pride of Africa.” By contrast, he said, Zille has a proven track record..Read more:.Helen Zille’s high-stakes gamble: Can the DA take Johannesburg? - Nicholas Lorimer.“She ran Cape Town as mayor, she did not destroy it. She ran the Western Cape as premier, she did not destroy it. Let me tell you something that will shock you. The Cape Town city centre is the second-most visited part of South Africa by tourists - second to the Kruger National Park. The ANC must be booted out of Johannesburg as soon as possible if you want to save the city.”Mashele, who worked in government as a speech writer for President Thabo Mbeki, was annoyed by President Cyril Ramaphosa’s response to the bombshell disclosures by setting up a new commission, and by his “shock” when he was shown the decay in Johannesburg on a walkabout. “He lives in Johannesburg, and he comes into the city every Monday for ANC meetings. So he drives on potholes. How can he not see the destruction?”He said from his time working in the presidency, he knew that as “client number one” of the intelligence agencies, Ramaphosa receives a daily intelligence briefing. From this he concludes that the president must have been aware of the allegations made by KwaZulu-Natal Police commissioner Nhlanhla Makhwanazi before they were made public.Mashele also dismissed the National Dialogue due to start next month as a waste of money, saying that the criminals were inside the ANC. “You can’t dialogue with criminals. The ANC will never build structures. The idea that some jamboree will fix the country, no. The National Dialogue is the last opportunity to loot before the local election. What will they take the money for the dialogue away from? Social grants?”In 2012, Mashele wrote a book predicting the ANC would lose its majority in 2024, which it did. Now his prediction for the 2029 election is that the ANC will decline to less than 30%. “South Africans are fed up.” At the time of the GNU, he supported it because he saw no alternative. “But it’s never been made to work: it’s a government of enemies, run on autopilot,” without agreed strategy or effective dispute resolution. Instead of a National Dialogue, he envisages a rescue project involving new actors driven by new leaders, that is not racist. Its mission must be to save blacks and whites, or it won’t work, he said.

Helendorsement: Mashele’s volte face on Zille - John Matisonn

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