Herman Mashaba

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Herman Samtseu Philip Mashaba (born 26 August 1959) is a South African politician, entrepreneur and the current president of ActionSA, a party he launched on 29 August 2020. He served as the Mayor of Johannesburg from 2016 to 2019, and is the founder of the hair product company Black Like Me. Mashaba is famous in South Africa for his background: he grew up struggling against poverty, and claims to have struggled against the apartheid government to open his own hair business, which became the biggest hair brand in South Africa, making him a millionaire. He publicly backed Mmusi Maimane in the Democratic Alliance leadership race. He wrote the autobiography Black Like You and his campaign manager, Michael Beaumont, recently published a biography called "The Accidental Mayor". A biography of Mashaba later published by Prince Mashele was referred to as "unauthorised" until it controversially emerged that Mashaba himself had paid Mashele R12.5million for the project. Mashaba refers to himself as a libertarian and "capitalist crusader" whose highest value is "individual freedom." On 22 August 2016, Mashaba was elected Mayor of Johannesburg by the first sitting of the city council following countrywide local government elections. He announced his resignation on 21 October 2019 and left office on 27 November 2019. After launching his new party, Mashaba announced he would run for Mayor of Johannesburg again in the 2021 municipal elections, as the ActionSA candidate. In February 2026, Mashaba announced he would compete for his party's nomination to run for Mayor of Johannesburg in the 2026 South African municipal elections.