Mashaba votes in Sandton on Wednesday, chasing a Joburg comeback from the ward that made him
ActionSA's mayoral candidate casts his ballot at the Sandton Fire Station at 9am, the same polling station he has used in 2019, 2021 and 2024, in a DA-held ward where his party took 16.8% five years ago.
Herman Mashaba casts his vote at the Sandton Fire Station at 9am on Wednesday, the ActionSA president and Johannesburg mayoral candidate’s fourth consecutive election at the same polling station.
As Sunday World reported on 30 October, the party’s election-day arrangements put Mashaba in Sandton, the country’s richest square mile, for the ballot. The venue is familiar: he voted there in the 2019 national elections, the 2021 local government elections and the 2024 national and provincial elections. In 2019 he was still Johannesburg mayor under the DA. He founded ActionSA after leaving the party in 2019, and has led it since.
This time the vote is the start of a bid to reclaim the mayoral chain. The mayoral field named in the party’s election material includes the DA’s Helen Zille, the African Transformation Movement’s Vuyo Zungula, the Patriotic Alliance’s Kenny Kunene and the EFF’s Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng.
The polling station sits in Ward 91, a DA-represented ward in the north of Johannesburg. In the 2021 local government elections the DA won the ward’s councillor ballot with 44.3%, the ANC took 24.6%, ActionSA 16.8% and the EFF 9.4%. On the proportional representation ballot in the same ward the DA took 42.3% and ActionSA 19.5%.
Those numbers are why the ward is worth watching. In its first local government contest in 2021, ActionSA became Johannesburg’s third-largest party with 16.05% of the vote and 44 seats in the council, behind the ANC and the DA, and it has been a factor in the city’s coalition politics since.
For voters outside Sandton, the party’s pitch is municipal basics. ActionSA’s 2026 manifesto centres on fixing struggling municipalities, with reliable water and electricity, working roads, proper sanitation and regular refuse collection. On coalitions, the party says it will not enter pre-election agreements but is open to post-election deals based on written commitments, service delivery targets and accountability.
The polls open on Wednesday, and Mashaba’s ballot is scheduled for 9am.
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