ActionSA is pleased to confirm that it has completed all of its candidate nomination processes with the IEC and by the prescribed deadline of today.
This submission took place despite false statements by the IEC in last week’s Constitutional Court case which claimed all political parties were opposed to the candidate nomination deadline and unable to meet it.
To the contrary, ActionSA concluded its first of its kind candidate election processes in Gauteng at the end of June. ActionSA through this process, has run the most participative candidate elections with threw open the process to all residents of the wards and municipalities.
This was done in the height of Gauteng’s third wave of Covid-19 infections, involved strict Covid protocols including online voting and, despite over 21000 votes being cast, ActionSA was successful in keeping people safe from the pandemic.
What has arisen from this process are ward and mayoral candidates who have been elected by the residents of wards and municipalities and not selected by politicians in smoke-filled rooms. This is why ActionSA can stand above all other parties, because our candidates have arisen in the absence of the toxic internal politics that have failed the South African people.
ActionSA prescribes to the principle that our representation must reflect the diversity of our country. This diversity includes race, gender, age and the kind of skills and experience necessary to run governments. This is a feature of ActionSA which sets us apart from others who have given up on the project of nurturing diversity and building a non-racial future for South Africa.
ActionSA’s candidates range from a matric student Chinedu Edward who just turned 18 to the 75-year-old Mike Tshishonga who served as the Deputy Director General under the leadership of than Minister of Justice Dullah Omar.
They include candidates with disabilities, like Arnold Maleka who is partially sighted but has proven his ability to serve communities with distinction. They include people with political experience in the case of former Mayors, former MMCs and former MPs. They include candidates who are new to politics but have distinguished themselves as engineers, lawyers, entrepreneurs and businesses, policemen and women and community servants.
Critically, ActionSA wields a serious track record in government that most established political parties cannot compete with. Our collective governance experience means that we will be able to present compelling blueprints for these municipalities, and voters will be able to believe in their credibility based on what has been observed in the past. This cannot be overstated in an era where South Africans have grown wary of the promises of political parties.
Over the course of the coming days, ActionSA will present these candidates to the people of their municipalities and to South Africans in general. We are immensely proud of the candidates that we have put forward, but we cannot take the credit because it was the residents of these communities and municipalities who we trusted to make the right decisions.
ActionSA is ready for these elections. Whether they take place in October, in February or anywhere in between, we will deliver a positive election campaign that offers hope to the people of South African that we can start the project to fix South Africa.
Above all else, and irrespective of when the elections will be held, the South African people have proven that they are ready for these elections like no other election before it.
