Herman Mashaba

Herman Mashaba is a South African selfmade entrepreneur, politician and the former Mayor of Johannesburg.

He is the founder of the hair products company Black Like Me and is famous in South Africa for his life story: growing up and struggling against poverty and the Apartheid government to open his own hair business, which became the biggest hair brand in South Africa.

Mashaba was brought up in near-poverty by his sisters while his absent domestic-worker mother worked to provide for the family. From a young age, he was a strategic thinker and found out that he was a natural salesman with an unswerving instinct for business.

From 2012 until May 2014, Mashaba served as chairman of the Free Market Foundation (FMF). He stepped down from his position when he joined the Democratic Alliance as an "ordinary card-carrying member", citing the need for the Foundation to remain politically impartial. Mashaba announced in December 2015 that he would accept a nomination to stand as a Democratic Alliance mayoral candidate for the City of Johannesburg in the 2016 local government elections. In August 2016, Mashaba was sworn in as the Mayor of Johannesburg, the first non-ANC Johannesburg mayor since 1994. In October 2019, he announced his resignation.

Mashaba and his political ally, Mmusi Maimane, soon formed The People's Dialogue, a medium to interact with ordinary South Africans and discuss social and civil issues.