I could begin this story by telling you of my meeting, on a sunny afternoon in mid-August, with Nobengi Mpepho, a grandmother from Phaphamani squatter camp.
I could begin this story by telling you of my meeting, on a sunny afternoon in mid-August, with Nobengi Mpepho, a grandmother from Phaphamani squatter camp.
I could tell you that we had found ourselves in the heart of Makana, at the offices of the Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM), a group to which Mpepho belongs, and that we were talking about why she and others in Ward 3 (Phaphamani and its neighbours) were pushing for the removal of Marcelle Booysen, their councillor.
I could tell you that minutes into our talk, some sweeping accusations tickled my curiosity. Booysen operated in the dark. She looked out for her own. And I said to Mpepho, “Suppose you get what you want. What then?” And she said to me, “No, no, we won’t tell anyone that.”
But do understand that you ought to know why this came to be in the first place. More than anything else, I wanted to understand what kind of logic had led these residents, in the name of justice, to resort to calling for the head of a sitting councillor — no more than a year into her tenure.
“This issue is not about her performance as a councillor,” a DA official has been quoted as saying. “Something else is going on there.” 'Graham’s Town' has had a lot of names — the Settler City, the City of Saints, eRhini, Makana — all of them bespeaking its charm: the history, the architecture, the racial makeup, and its contemporary face.
Today, this home of more than 70 000 denizens can be said to mirror what is an everyday reality in most corners of the country. After 18 years, the African National Congress (ANC) remains in power –– the city’s only ruling party since the end of white-minority rule, in 1994. Phaphamani, though, spoils any story of smooth progress the ANC can lay claim to.
The settlement lies at the city’s northern edges, from the centre of town, up the western suburbs and past the “coloured areas”, paved roads giving way to pastureland, before 1 000 shacks and mud-houses clinging on to a hillside appear.
This is where Mpepho has lived all her life. On the aforementioned afternoon, a Friday, I got off a taxi on the eastern flank and stepped off the main road that snakes like an S throughout the settlement. I walked past a shebeen at a street corner, then turned onto a gravel street, facing up the hill. I
t may as well have been high summer, the people seeking out any shade they could find as the unrelenting sun went on to burn the back of my neck, heating the ground. Near the far end, after a file of leaning houses, was Mpepho’s unpainted mudflat. “We’ve been waiting and waiting,” she had told me once.
“And we’re still waiting.” I thought of this as I stood to knock, not for the first time, on her door.
Last year, when I was an intern at this newspaper, I had undertaken a series of visits to her house, the basis of which was that the last decade has seen the dawn of residents’ groups, also known as community based social movements such as the UPM.
Since the murder of activist Andries Tatane, this trend has received considerable attention. I have written elsewhere of the reasons behind this, elaborating on its significance. Safe to say, I had found Mpepho to be the embodiment of all this unquiet change.
Of the pre-democracy generation, she was a former ANC member and one of its loudest critics, travelling across the land to campaign against its failures and policies. And now that I was in Phaphamani (this after an hour on an N1 ruled by heavy-duty trucks from neighbouring Peddie, my home town) to see what change, if any, had taken root in my absence, I also wanted to see her.
For all the talk of ejecting Booysen from her councillorship, Phaphamani had gone through four councillors before they received electricity last year, at the tail of the previous councillor’s term. That came after a violent protest. And Mpepho was there as one of its vociferous elders.
But Mpepho was not in that day. She was in town, she said when I called her, attending a meeting. Could we meet there, rather? But this was also an opportunity to seek others, and I went to see Nofikile Mvava, a grandmother who sometimes helps farm evictees settle in Phaphamani, which gets her in trouble when she does not consult others; Vukile Tshisane, a 32-year-old leg-amputee who survives on assembling mud houses; and Elvis Buswana, 56, a newcomer who was considering selling his late parents’ Glenmore house and moving to Makana for good.
By 3pm, talk had settled into a routine: the residents I spoke to were split between Booysen’s detractors and her backers. “We don’t want her here,” said Mvava. “We’re still waiting,” said Buswana. “We don’t have jobs.” At the southern end of Phaphamani, beside a cemetery, I took another taxi to town.
In no time, it was speeding down Dr Jacob Zuma Drive, past a liquor store, the taxi rank, then Market Square, the streets crowded with the regular suspects: loud vendors, dawdling gogos and harried workers. At the robots after Shoprite, the taxi took a right into Bathurst Street.
The UPM offices are on the first floor of a storefront building, atop a Cash Crusaders. Mpepho and another woman were already seated as I walked in and sat down. I said, “I see nothing has changed in Phaphamani.”
And Mpepho, a strong woman with a stiff doekie and a withering look for tense moments, said, with a shake of the head, “Nothing has.” “Except for the electricity in the houses.” She nodded a yes. “And the new shacks.” She nodded again.
I asked about the genesis of the campaign and how she saw this ending. Mpepho remembered everything: the meetings Booysen had not attended, the incidents in which she was allegedly rude to residents and the rumours she was buying favour with food. Listening to Mpepho’s explanations, I recalled an incident I had glimpsed in the archives of this newspaper.
It concerned Booysen’s predecessor, Xolani Simakuhle, who as a ward committee member has played a steering role in the anti-Booysen crusade — “Simakuhle is only helping us,” Mpepho said, “and we asked him to.” Simakuhle went through similar trials. In the glow of Cope’s emergence, he had been suspended by his party.
Community meetings would end disrupted. The residents were angry with him. They said they had no houses, no water, no proper toilets. And that’s when I asked Mpepho how she saw their campaign ending. She said she would not tell me. And that is how the interview ended.
