MAKHOSI KHOZA
I refused to take media interviews last week. I also decided not to contest the sudden, ruthless, irrational, humiliating, and totally unanticipated termination of my ActionSA membership.
I did so not out of guilt but in the interest of South Africans and to protect my own sanity. Too many South African women politicians are being pushed out of the political field. Honestly! How can one have a decent engagement on gender issues and the crippling effect of patriarchal attitudes with Mashaba and Beaumont?
As South Africans may recall, apart from the financial difficulties faced by ADeC, the political party I helped found in 2017, I also decided to walk away from it because the environment had become too toxic.
Furthermore, I did not want a repeat of the Sam Shilowa vs Terror Lekota COPE debacle. South Africans are gatvol of political infighting. They want politicians to fix South Africa and put people before politics.
The latter explains why I opted not even to challenge ActionSA’s foolish decision in court. I have no doubt, in my mind, that had I done so, I would have won. This is because the entire disciplinary process was fundamentally flawed. The charges were flimsy and baseless.
They were based on hearsay evidence. How can I be held responsible for dismissing ActionSA Soweto members for shouting my name? I’m based in KZN and not in Johannesburg? Johannesburg is Herman Mashaba’s constituency.
On November 12, 2021, I learnt from News24 that there was a protest by the now-dismissed Soweto ActionSA members. One of the four male witnesses at my disciplinary hearing was Bafana Mthumkhulu, Herman Mashaba’s bodyguard. His evidence was literally a few words about the screenshot of WhatsApp messages. It was from one of the dismissed ActionSA Soweto members who were communicating with me.
Mashaba's imaginary alleged plot to unseat him is based on this third party WhatsApp evidence. This gentleman, who I have never met in person before, was aggrieved at how Mashaba discussed my personal finance issues on Radio 702 in January 2022. How can I account for the suggestions made by this disgruntled member to form my own party?
In fact, all four witnesses were men. Their evidence was pathetic. Michael Beaumont presented newspaper articles, opinion pieces, video clips of disgruntled Soweto members as evidence. It was disgraceful for a graduate from Michaelhouse, an elitist private school with rolling lush green lawns, to present such shoddy evidence against someone whose schooling was surrounded by dust and garbage.
ActionSA also denied me legal representation. I was also told that the decision of the ActionSA Senate is final. It can only be appealed at the High Court. I simply don’t have the energy to fight senseless battles. The three male witnesses, including Mashaba, even got so emotional when I cross-examined them. Each one of them spoke as though each had a different set of charges. It is shameful for an organisation that claims to uphold the rule of law to run such a messy legal process.
By the way, the complainant and chief witness was Herman Mashaba, the president, founder and funder of ActionSA. The Ethics and Disciplinary panel had only one option: to deliver on the predetermined outcomes and wishes of the master. Challenging ActionSA's decision to fire me was going to be a fruitless exercise.
Mashaba will die for the DA. Its politics and whitewash are in his DNA. No matter how much the DA bullies him, he begs to serve it. I had no chance of a fair and just process. Mashaba does not listen to people like me with darker skin pigmentation. Mashaba does anything that Michael Beaumont and Andre Coetzee say to him. I honestly don’t understand why he resigned from the DA. He is still serving its interests of protecting white privilege and not those of all South Africans. Sometimes, I think he is trapped in black skin and woolly hair. He is in my prayers.
If there is one thing I regret and would like to apologise for, it is unintentionally outshining Mashaba during the September and October 2021 local government campaign rallies held in Johannesburg. I honestly don’t know what spirit possessed me.
I also decided not to challenge ActionSA’s ill-informed decision because ActionSA is a notoriously sexist organisation. This will not change any time soon. ActionSA weaponised women against each other. For example, Advocate Gill Benson was made to resign from the Johannesburg city council in order to deliver a predetermined verdict against me as a woman in favour of Herman Mashaba, male chauvinist par excellence.
I learned at the disciplinary hearing that the ActionSA constitution was amended when I questioned the appointment of Vytjie Mentor as a prosecutor who has no legal qualifications as stipulated in ActionSA’s constitution that was submitted to the IEC. Mentor is a woman.
They also put Lerato Ngobeni, ActionSA’s national spokesperson (a woman), in a difficult position to communicate a decision persecuting another woman (myself). I have no problem with ActionSA women. I just wish them luck from the DA white male operatives that are running ActionSA. My prayers are with you as you navigate through such hostile terrain.
What is the difference between ActionSA and the DA when it comes to how black African women leaders and black people are treated? How many more black African women must suffer at the hand of these young white male supremacists before we rise?
Therefore, electing not to engage in the unceremonious and merciless termination of my AcionSA membership was my attempt to avoid prolonged unproductive, prejudicial and senseless public spats with ActionSA.
All that I do politically is to advance an inclusive agenda and interests of my primary motive forces. Black Africans and women are indeed benefiting from the democratic constitutional dispensation, but there is no human dignity and gender parity. As women, we are abused and used repeatedly. I cannot wait to have a woman President in South Africa. Enough is enough.
I must repeat, my silence was out of respect for the South African voters and general members of the public. Accepting the premature termination was with a heavy heart. I felt as though I had let down ActionSA voters. I’m still recovering.
I was looking forward to serving the people of the eThekwini Municipality with distinction for the duration of my term of office as a councillor, as I have done many times before to all South African citizens. I was going to root out corruption without fear, favour or prejudice.
The major beneficiaries of my dismissal are corrupt eThekwini officials. “Niyohamba nisinda.” The losers are, regrettably, the people of eThekwini. The ANC will continue with its misrule and corruption as it had done before the watchful eyes of Nicole Graham from the DA and her team, who sit within the executive committee (exco) of this municipality.
Nicole Graham even wrote a letter to ActionSA, pressuring them to fire me. Today, all ActionSA councillors in eThekwini are inexperienced. Musa Kubheka and his girlfriend Busi Radebe are just looking for better-paying jobs. It was a real sacrifice for me to accept being a councillor.
I was the deputy mayor and chairperson of exco at the age of 26 in Pietermaritzburg. Shame! Musa Kubheka gets his instructions from the DA’s Nicole Graham. I’m not handled and captured. In fact, it is impossible to force me to advance narrow agendas that have nothing to do with my primary motive forces. That is ActionSA’s big problem with me. Call me a rebellious woman if you wish. I don’t care.
I must admit, though, that I was deeply hurt. ActionSA had a lot of potential. That is why I joined it. I must confess I have not yet fully recovered.
I’m just speaking out because Herman Mashaba is still feasting on my pain. I can no longer allow ActionSA’s persistent and unwarranted besmirching and assassination of my character as a role model for many South African women.
I’m not sure how long my recovery will take. All I can say is, at an appropriate time, I will return. Don’t count me out yet.
South Africa is bleeding profusely. We have self-centred and heartless politicians. We must not allow them to claim undeserved easy victories.
Mashaba forgets that it is our collective effort that elevated ActionSA from nothing to the sixth largest party in RSA.
“Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organise the people, they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress” - Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
It was my face, not Herman Mashaba's, that was used to establish the ActionSA footprint in KwaZulu-Natal. His name is only largely recognisable in some old generations of black hair salons.
It is tragic that men with low self-esteem and lacking sufficient experience in politics choose not to learn from outstanding women political leaders who have walked the torturous path for over 40 years.
Instead, they waste much of their precious energy channelling it on destroying courageous, ethical, and independent thinking women. This can only be correctly characterised as cowardly acts of men with shallow political content. They care more about themselves than South Africans they claim to represent.
“The more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can transform it. This individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. This person is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into a dialogue with them. This person does not consider himself or herself the proprietor of history or of all people, or the liberator of the oppressed; but he or she does commit himself or herself, within history, to fight at their side.” - Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
I cannot be expected to revise my confidence and outspokenness downward to accommodate the fragile and deeply bruised egos of Herman Mashaba and Michael Beaumont. When I challenged them, it was not out of malice. I did not do so to belittle or outshine them. I did so to enrich ActionSA’s policy content, engender a culture of debate culture as well as help establish its distinct political offering to all South Africans regardless of race and gender.
ActionSA and DA wanted me to pretend as if South Africa’s problems are exclusively the ANC creation. No! We are fighting the ANC precisely because it betrayed us. The ANC paved a way for white supremacy to find its way back, claiming fake morality. Colonialism and apartheid systems may have been outlawed, yet they continue unabated with the help of the black political elite. The 1994 ANC Parliament class betrayed us. Some of them will not leave even after they presided over the reduction of its pillars to dust and ashes. The ANC failed to restore the human dignity of black Africans. That is why sesidlala oMashaba.
It is tragic that Herman Mashaba chose his white DA masters over me. He chose to extinguish me from the political discourse in South Africa. The same way the DA dealt with Lindiwe Mazibuko, Mbali Ntuli, Phumzile Van Damme. I don’t think I’m wrong if I classify Mashaba as the Enemy of Progress. We are still oppressed by Herman Mashaba. Don’t be fooled by the millions you made relaxing our black hair.
I tried my best to show Mr Mashaba respect as the President of ActionSA whilst his white handlers, Michael Beaumont and Andre Coetzee, casualised and sometimes vilified him. They call him “Herman” as though they are speaking to a small boy. They could not do that to me. That is why I am out at ActionSA.
I had hoped that accepting ActionSA’s termination of my membership was going to stop Mashaba’s childish, relentless and unwarranted attack on my character. I’m now ready to present my side of the story.
I’m now available for interviews. My gloves are off.
Daily News