By: Staff Reporter
ActionSA president Herman Mashaba has called on South Africans to work together to rebuild the country.
While launching his organisation’s manifesto ahead of the local government elections in November, Mashaba said the only way for the country to be repositioned was for all sectors to join hands.
“It is ActionSA that is going to Fix South Africa, together with the good, hard-working, law-abiding, and peace-loving people of our beloved country,” he said.
Looking ahead to the elections, Mashaba said they had ambitions of winning municipalities outright.
“We are not like the hundreds of political parties that lack the ambition or imagination to be more than opposition parties. Despite our relative youth, ActionSA is a party set apart with a strong track record in government.
Within our ranks, we have former Mayors, former Deputy Mayors, MMCs, Chiefs of Staff, Chiefs of Metro Police, CEOs of local government associations, chairpersons of parliamentary portfolio committees, and the list goes on and on! The track record and experience of these individuals has been married to the experiences of South African professionals to produce a local government manifesto that is our blueprint for igniting hope,” Mashaba said.
He asked South Africans to give his organization a chance and if they fail to deliver in five years, be judged harshly. Mashaba said in the next five years, his organization would focus on the following:
Re-orientating people-centric governments that deliver services with pride,
Building an ethical and professional public service,
Bringing back the rule of law,
Being a caring and inclusive government and,
Delivering an environment where businesses and people prosper.
“Municipal governments must be re-oriented to serve people and deliver services with pride. For too many years, local government has become unresponsive to the needs of people and communities. It has become a place that appears to exist to serve itself, divorced from what public service is meant to be – the greatest honour possible, to serve the public,” said Mashaba.
He added that the organization believed that the residents of municipalities are the customers of those municipalities and expect to receive quality and reliable services and they deserve no less.
“Our governments will be people-centric and ensure that we provide value to our customers, the residents we serve. This requires that every function, department, and person of these municipalities be redesigned and measured against its direct or indirect benefit to the people of that municipality. It must involve widespread training and re-orientation designed to remove the brainwashing of cadre deployment. It must develop a sense of pride in the work of municipalities, build morale in the importance of serving people, and create a culture of excellence,” he said.
Mashaba also promised that should he be voted into power, he would change the dependency on Eskom for the supply of electricity. He said municipalities should generate and procure their own electricity.
“The days of reliance on Eskom are over. Our municipalities will use every available mechanism to generate or procure our own electricity to increase our independence from Eskom. These opportunities exist in terms of current electricity generating licenses, new opportunities emerging from the developments with IPPs and, if necessary, litigation against a national government that must get out of the way for municipalities to deliver what it cannot,” he said.
