‘We don’t need AK47s to remove criminals’: Herman Mashaba votes in Sandton

ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba was elated to cast his vote at the Sandton fire station in  Gauteng on Monday, despite long queues and sweltering hot weather.

He was accompanied by the party’s leadership, who all said victory was certain. 

The party is hoping for an outright win in the highly contested Johannesburg metro “to bring about real change”.

“I’m very excited to have cast my vote. We will wait for the results within the next 24 hours. We’re positive as ActionSA because we made it clear from day one that we’re not going to be a party of opposition because that’s the only way we can make a difference to the lives of our people and our country,” said Mashaba.

“Our goal is to unseat this criminal organisation called the ANC out of power. They’ve abused us, they’ve destroyed our families, they’ve destroyed our infrastructure. We’ve got to unseat them. Let’s use our constitutional right as South Africans. We don’t need guns and AK47s to remove a criminal organisation. Let’s go out there and vote the ANC out. They’ve abused us for too long.”

The year-old party has had many battles with the Electoral Commission (IEC), including one over the omission of its name on some ballot papers. Mashaba said the party viewed this an unfair treatment. 

“We have had four confrontations with the IEC and feel we have been treated unfairly. But we’re excited. We’ve educated our people after being subjected to only a logo. It has been an easy process.

“If they [the IEC] thought they were going to distract us and confuse voters, they were wrong. Free and fair elections are not about political parties. It’s about civil society, it’s about democracy. The IEC has a constitutional responsibility to make it easy for voters to identify the political parties that they want to vote for,. They made it difficult for us but we took advantage and educated our people.”

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