The mayor of South Africa’s commercial capital Johannesburg, Herman Mashaba, on Monday announced his resignation from both the Democratic Alliance (DA) and his position as the city’s first resident amid signs of emerging fissures in the main opposition party.
According to the mayor’s office, Mashaba will step down as a DA councillor for Johannesburg City on 27 November, effectively relinquishing his position as mayor of the country’s biggest and richest city.
The mayor said he resigned because he could not work under the DA that has elected Helen Zille, at the weekend, as the party’s federal council chairperson, effectively making her as the overall in charge of the opposition entity currently run by Mmusi Maimane, a young black leader.
Zille’s victory was a triumph of people who have been against a pro-black narrative that he has been fighting for in the party, which is accused of standing for former apartheid sympathisers, Mashaba said.
“The election of Helen Zille as the chairperson of DA federal council represents a victory for the (right wing) people in the DA who stand diametrically opposed to my beliefs and value system and, I believe, those of most South Africans of all backgrounds,” Mashaba said.
He added: “I cannot reconcile myself with a group of people who believe that race is irrelevant in the discussion of inequality and poverty in South Africa in 2019.”
He said that he could not “reconcile with people who not do see that South Africa is more unequal today than it was in 1994”.
The rise of Zille would undermine the governance arrangements Mashaba had in place with the second opposition the Economic Freedom Fighters – whose support the DA needed to have Mashaba as Johannesburg mayor, he said.
DA leader Maimane said he respected the decision of Mashaba who was a friend and fellow comrade.
NM/jn/abj/APA