Meet Johannesburg's new libertarian mayor: Herman Mashaba is something new in South Africa. But can a black pro-market politician make real changes?

• Author: Louw, Leon
• Position: Interview

Herman Mashaba is an unlikely mayor for South Africa's largest city. In a country that has been dominated for more than two decades by the left-wing African National Congress (ANC), no one foresaw political victory for a self-declared "capitalist crusader," property rights zealot, and beauty products mogul who opposes the minimum wage and zoning regulations. Mashaba is an outlier even in his own party, the white-dominated centrist Democratic Alliance (D.A.).

The son of a domestic worker raised by his sisters in a black township near Pretoria under apartheid, Mashaba became a self-made millionaire in a country that systematically excluded blacks from economic opportunities. Sworn into office on August 22, he must wrangle a coalition that includes the revolutionary socialist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) as he tries to implement an anti-regulation, pro-market agenda.

reason: Under apartheid, the white government claimed to be capitalist. So many black South Africans support parties that are critical of free markets, such as the ANC, or explicitly anti-capitalist, like EFF. What explains your pro-market stance?

Mashaba: In 1950, they passed the Suppression of Communism Act. So when I was born in 1959, by virtue of that law and being black, I was automatically a communist. Look at that piece of legislation. It says that anyone that advocated the rights of blacks must be regarded as a communist.

What compounded the problem was that as we were growing up, the communists were the ones that seemed to be helping us, and on the other hand the Americans and the British were seen to be working with the apartheid government. So as far as blacks were concerned, Russia was the savior.

People had no idea what Russia was doing to its own people. If you saw the mess that was happening in Russia--our people had no idea. But the ANC guys who had been to Russia, they knew how brutal the system is.

In 1980, with my university closing down, I tried to leave the country to go for military training. I was hoping the Russians would give me an AK-47 and train me. I had nothing to lose; the apartheid government wanted to destroy my future and my life.

reason : How did you become a capitalist, then?

Mashaba: People must be careful by what they mean by capitalist. Capitalism for me is my right to feed myself and my family, to provide for myself and my family without any government intervention.

Government's role is to ensure that people don't kill me; when I have a...