Herman Samtseu Philip Mashaba 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.

He is the founder of the hair product company Black Like Me. He is famous in South Africa for his background: he grew up struggling against poverty and 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 recently he wrote his new memoir “The accidental mayor”. Mashaba is a libertarian and “capitalist crusader” whose highest value is “individual freedom.”