The Accidental Mayor. Michael Beaumont
event, he spoke about growing up without parents present in the home. In explaining how this affected a young boy, he described how he had ‘woken up one day to discover a part of my anatomy which was already awake’. After a moment of awkward silence the audience roared with laughter. On another occasion he spoke openly about smoking dagga as a teenager in the townships of Pretoria and realising there was a business opportunity there, until his mother put an end to that. Schooled in conventional politics, my team and I would kick into overdrive and ready ourselves for the expected fallout, but it never came. Audiences embraced him for his candidness, his relatability and his humanity – traits they no longer associated with politicians. But then, Mashaba refused to call himself a politician. He started every engagement by insisting that he was a public servant.
Mashaba is one of both the hardest and the kindest leaders I have ever met. When people failed, he would be forgiving if he believed they had operated in good faith. However, when he lost faith in someone’s intentions, he could be brutal. On a few occasions, the deserving recipients of his wrath ended up in my office, where I’d have to play the role of comforter, which was entirely out of character for me. The truth was that I had to ensure that their departure didn’t result in an ugly spat that would necessitate a PR war.
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