ActionSA president Herman Mashaba, on Tuesday, announced the party’s Eastern Cape provincial chairperson Athol Trollip as its candidate for premier of the Eastern Cape.

Mashaba was announcing the party’s premier candidates for the Free State, Eastern Cape and Mpumalanga. 

Trollip joined ActionSA in 2022. He left the Democratic Alliance (DA) in 2019, shortly after former leader Mmusi Maimane resigned.

Mashaba explained that as the former mayor of the Nelson Mandela Bay metropolitan municipality, Trollip brought with him an invaluable understanding of governance in a province that had been hollowed out by the ruling party.

“He knows how to efficiently run an administration, and will, therefore, be able to hit the ground running to fix the province. Trollip has a long history of activism in the Eastern Cape and brought that knowledge to ActionSA where he helped launch hundreds of new branches and establish a formidable ground operation to take on the ruling party,” he added.

Mashaba announced Patricia Kopane as ActionSA’s Free State premier candidate and Thoko Mashiane as the Mpumalanga premier candidate.

He said that in a province where State capture crippled government, Kopane would be able to bring the practical solutions necessary to restore frontline service delivery to improve the lives of residents.

He explained that during Kopane’s time in Parliament, she had proven herself as a “true corruption buster”, something, he says, which the Free State sorely needed.

Mashiane is a former municipal manager and a former provincial women’s leader of the ruling party. Mashaba highlighted that she has, over the past few months, proven herself able to quickly build structures in Mpumalanga.

“She brings with her governance expertise in a province which has been plagued by a breakdown in the rule of law, including open borders, unreliable service delivery and where the poorest have fallen victim to the VBS scandal,” he explained.

Mashaba highlighted that the candidates all held “impeccable professional credentials” and that they had proven themselves to embody ethical leadership. He added that they held governance experience and had long been active in the communities they serviced.

He said the party’s candidates had undergone rigorous testing.

“From formal written testing to panel interviews, our candidates have proven themselves worthy,” he said.

The announcement of the three candidates follows the appointment of North West premier candidate Kgosi Kwena Mangope; KwaZulu-Natal premier candidate Zwakele Mncwango; Northern Cape premier candidate Andrew Louw and Limpopo premier candidate Kgoshi Letsiri Phaahla.

Mashaba noted that it had been the party’s plan to announce the Western Cape candidate on Tuesday, however, in consultation with the Western Cape Provincial Executive Committees (PEC) it was decided to postpone the announcement and do it alongside the announcement of the party’s Gauteng candidate.

“In the Western Cape there is a great chance that ActionSA will be part of the provincial government after the upcoming elections. It is, therefore, important that the opportunities presented by the PEC should not be ignored,” he explained.

He noted that Gauteng held strategic importance for ActionSA and, therefore, the party believed it best to wait to announce its premier candidate for the province at a standalone briefing at a later stage. 

“This is because we believe in Gauteng exists a strong chance of unseating the [ruling]  party through a coalition, including a probability of ActionSA achieving an outright majority. Several thousand activists have been working tirelessly in Gauteng over the past three years, led by provincial chairperson Funzi Ngobeni,” Mashaba added.

ACTIONSA GROWTH

He highlighted that since ActionSA came onto the political scene in 2020, its mission had been to remove the ruling party from government and fix South Africa.

“We set out a programme of action that would build up to ActionSA contesting in all nine provinces in the 2024 national elections. All across South Africa, voters have been inspired by the message ActionSA has to offer. In 2021, over 550 000 voters chose us to represent them in the six out of 278 municipalities we contested, making us the sixth largest political party nationwide as a result,” Mashaba said.

In September, ActionSA hosted its inaugural policy conference where over 600 delegates from across the country adopted “innovative and pragmatic” solutions to fix South Africa.

“From ending loadshedding, to the first real alternative to the failed B-BBEE Act of 2003, ActionSA has a plan to turn around the decay and steer the country towards prosperity. When we launch our national manifesto in March, South Africans won’t hear pie-in-the-sky dreams, but a practical plan of action from the first day we step into office,” said Mashaba.

Since its formation three and a half years ago, ActionSA had grown into an organisation with over 250 000 members nationwide, he highlighted.

Over 1 500 branches have been launched in nine provinces, with the aim to launch 60% of branches nationwide by the time of the national elections, later this year.

“We have trained thousands of activists to keep oversight at voting stations, and thousands more to spread the message of ActionSA countrywide. And we have recruited some of the best people in the country to represent South Africans in their provincial legislatures and in the national assembly,” he added.