Outsider

Across the world, outsiders have been infiltrating the theatre of mainstream politics: Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine, Donald Trump in the US, Emmanuel Macron in France, Hakainde Hichilema in Zambia – and, in South Africa, Herman Mashaba, who went from being a business tycoon to Johannesburg' s mayor and founder of his own political party, ActionSA. In his trademark opinionated fashion, political scientist Prince Mashele traces Mashaba' s life from dire poverty to building the Black Like Me empire. He delivers a fascinating fly-on-the-wall account of Mashaba' s dramatic rise to the Jo' burg mayor' s office, managing the fragile coalition with the EFF and seeing off ANC dirty tricks. New information and insights abound in the tale of Mashaba' s bitter falling out with the DA. What emerges in this biography is a portrait of a pragmatic man with a passion for capitalism, a novice politician who defies ideological boxes. In Mashele' s hands, Mashaba is also the perfect foil for our troubling political machinery, revealing ever more sharply the fault lines of South Africa' s political system and the rot of the ANC in government.