Zille deployed by the ANC to hide corruption in Johannesburg – Mashaba

ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba believes the Democratic Alliance’s (DA’s) mayoral candidate for Johannesburg, Helen Zille, has been deployed by DA donors and the ANC to hide corruption in the city.

However, Zille called this “an entirely unfounded figment of a diseased imagination.”

Speaking to Newsday, he alleged that Zille was growing unhappy with his management of the city, saying that he was providing services to poor communities that did not vote for the DA. 

Mashaba left the DA in 2019 following a conflict with the leadership. This conflict, Mashaba said, was spearheaded by Zille.

“She worked with the white councillors to make my life miserable,” he said. “It is through these councillors that Zille infiltrated the confidential councillors’ WhatsApp group.”

Mashaba said he was pursuing R35 billion in fraud and corruption cases against senior ANC members.

“Cases as clear as day,” Mashaba said. “And I was unstoppable, but the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) was uncooperative.”

“I was actually at the time consulting with lawyers to force the NPA to prosecute these cases,” he added. 

Mashaba alleges that Zille took this information to the ANC.

“She approached the ANC to say, ‘This man is dangerous. He’s fighting corruption. Can you come up with a motion of no confidence against him, and I will personally get the white councillors to vote with you to get him out,” Mashaba claimed. 

Mashaba left the DA before this vote of no confidence could take place. 

“They said I’m talking nonsense, and people believed them,” he said. “But the problem is, when you tell lies, you can’t always remember correctly.”

R35 billion in corruption

Mashaba accused Helen Zille of shifting her stance on ANC corruption since the DA joined the Government of National Unity (GNU).

He recalled that Zille once pushed for President Cyril Ramaphosa’s impeachment over the Phala Phala scandal but later said the DA would protect him as a GNU partner.

Mashaba noted that Zille announced her Johannesburg mayoral bid the same week Ramaphosa praised DA-run municipalities, and later told eNCA the ANC was the only party she would work with in a coalition.

“Reflecting on this, it looks to me like Zille is actually deployed,” Mashaba claimed, suggesting she was sent not by the DA but by donors tied to R35 billion in corruption cases.

He argued that Zille’s role is to “cover up” corruption and secure an ANC-DA alliance in Johannesburg:

“What happened to those cases when I left? Have you ever heard about the DA asking for the status of these investigations?”

‘Unfounded figment of a diseased imagination’

Responding to Newsday regarding these allegations, Zille said that this “is an entirely unfounded figment of a diseased imagination.”

She stated that there is no truth to anything Mashaba said and that no such meeting between herself and the ANC took place in 2019, “let alone with the agenda alleged by Mashaba.”

Zille has long said that the DA had “grown frustrated with Mashaba’s relationship with the EFF.”

“He relied on them to stay in power and as such, he began spending more time with their caucus, than his own,” Zille said.

In a recent interview with SABC News, she said that “Mashaba was going to face a vote of no confidence, taken by the ANC, but would have been supported by the DA caucus,” she said.