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By Daniel Friedman

Digital news editor


Mashaba gets mocked by Mbalula, Manyi for ’embarrassed’ to be in Cape Town tweet

The Joburg mayor says the ANC has destroyed every 'city, township, village' they've ever governed.


Johannesburg’s DA mayor and former hair-care magnate Herman Mashaba took to Twitter on Friday night to express his embarrassment about being in Cape Town and feeling like he is in “another country” compared to “all other cities” throughout South Africa.

While the tweet was a bit ambiguous and some found its meaning hard to decipher, most of those who reacted to the tweet appeared to be of the view that Mashaba was complementing the way the DA-run city of Cape Town is run, and expressing his embarrassment that his own city as well as others are not run as well. Mashaba was likely suggesting the ANC – the party he inherited Johannesburg from – is not competent when it comes to running cities when compared with the DA, who has been governing Cape Town for ten years.

Mashaba confirmed this meaning in a second, later tweet, in which he said those on Twitter should not try “spin reality”, adding that the ANC ANC has” destroyed not only Joburg, but every city, township, village, everywhere they govern”.

In another tweet, the Joburg mayor said Cape Town gives him hope “that we can still repair our damaged cities and towns destroyed by ANC mismanagement and focus on blatant corruption”.

The ANC’s outspoken head of elections, Fikile Mbalula, responded to the first tweet asking the mayor if his account had been “hacked”.

https://twitter.com/MbalulaFikile/status/1093981143941165057

In another tweet, the Johannesburg mayor accused all those who defended “ANC failures” on his timeline of being “direct beneficiaries of corruption”.

Mbalula was not the only prominent politician to respond to Mashaba. ATM’s head of strategy Mzwanele Manyi responded by taking Mashaba to task over the running of his own city.

“Can you imagine my torture in a DA run Johannesburg?” he asked.

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