Khutsong,++Rapule+Tabane,+M+and+G,+plus+Mtshali,+Star



=Khutsong, my personal hell=


 * Rapule Tabane**

Mail and Guardian, Johannesburg, 24 February 2006
The dining room still smells of smoke from the burnt curtains. The glass shards from the SABMiller and Savannah bottles used as petrol bombs are scattered across the bedroom and the dining room floors.

The damage was not as extensive as it would have been if all the bombs had gone off. But my sisters, who own the house, say that was precisely the point: a shot across the bows, a warning that anyone daring to associate with the African National Congress is asking for trouble.

No one dares sleep in the house now. The house of my childhood is a battered ghost -- all because my youngest sister is an ANC ward candidate in Khutsong.

Here, anything remotely associated with the ANC becomes a legitimate target for community wrath. It is a township where, in past elections, the ANC has always won more than 75% of the votes.

Thus my sister, who has never been a councillor and had no part in the decision to incorporate the Merafong municipality into North West, carries the cross of the enemy.

The township is at war with itself. With the municipal offices, the library, shops and councillors’ houses burnt, there are no enemy targets left. So the rage is now directed at ANC candidates.

Only the ANC believes it can hold credible elections and win. Even if it happens, with the township a gutted shell, high schools at a standstill, people living in fear and friends and neighbours turning against each other, it would be a Pyrrhic victory.

Nothing suggests there can be free and fair campaigning, let alone balloting. At the moment, no political party is campaigning at all. There is not one poster in the township.

The ANC’s knight in shining armour, Mosiuoa “Terror” Lekota, has succeeded only in further poisoning the atmosphere. After spending most of the week working with party structures wearing his hat as ANC national chairperson, he changed his headgear at the weekend. He called a “government imbizo” for last Sunday in Khutsong, where he became defence minister.

The violence which erupted as a result of that meeting has fuelled new conflict, with local youths fighting against the amampondo who attended Lekota’s meeting. These are mainly former gold mine workers from the Transkei who are now staying in Khutsong’s informal settlements after being retrenched.

Lekota’s gung ho approach was doomed from the start. It included marching on a shebeen, confronting a teacher, Jomo Mogale, and accusing him of misleading residents.

Mogale says Lekota did not understand the demarcation issue and was hell-bent on gaining glory for himself as “the man who sorted out Khutsong”.

The minister’s military approach to what is a burning political matter lies at the heart of residents’ concerns.

And where is the man who created this mess -- Minister of Provincial and Local Government Sydney Mufamadi? It was Mufamadi, after all, who overrode the recommendation of the Municipal Demarcation Board that Khutsong and the broader Merafong municipality stay in Gauteng. The board’s findings were based on public hearings conducted on the spot. He also ignored the local government committee in the Gauteng legislature.

Of course, it was the ANC that decided the general principle of scrapping cross-border municipalities. But Mufamadi had a big say in how the municipalities would fall. He screwed it up, not only in Khutsong, but also in Matatiele and Moutse.

Mufamadi should not have created the impression that public input counted for anything if his attitude was always that government must be left to govern.

That he failed to anticipate the level of resistance in Khutsong is the fault of yet another layer of the ruling party. The local leadership of the ANC, led by the spineless Merafong mayor Des van Rooyen, failed to convey to their party seniors the depth of community dissatisfaction.

Although they initially stood by residents, they later saw their role as transmitting instructions from national to local structures, rather than the other way round.

The leaders of the Anti-North West Committee may be a motley band of South African Communist Party opportunists, wannabe and failed politicians, genuine community leaders and irresponsible rabble-rousers who deserve condemnation for the intimidation.

But the truth is that they exploited an issue that was handled badly by the ANC. It may be unruly youths who hurled the four petrol bombs that destroyed the soul of my family. But in the end, Mufamadi must take the blame.

The party should heed the words of Martin Luther King: “Violent revolts are generated by revolting conditions. There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of people who feel they have no stake in it; who feel they have nothing to lose.”


 * From: http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=265243&area=/insight/insight__national/**



=**Defying the will of the people**=

Failing to hear the voice of the residents, especially in cross - boundary municipalities, does not bode well for a state of democracy

The Star, February 23, 2006

 * By Thokozani Mtshali**

It is a great pity that the people of Merafong will go to the polls on March 1 in a volatile political climate where intimidation and violence have placed a question mark over the freeness and the fairness of the municipal election there. Hopefully the ruling ANC will learn a lesson or two from the cross-boundary municipality fiasco, including that in a democracy like ours, the government should take the voice of the people seriously.

Another should be that irrespective of how big or powerful a political party may be, there is nothing more important and gratifying than political legitimacy.

At the core of the political conflict is the inclusion of areas forming the Merafong greater municipality such as Khutsong and Carletonville under the North West provincial administration, whereas residents wished to remain in Gauteng.

Since then, the scene in Khutsong has been one of riots, teargas, vandalism, intimidation and angry mobs running amok at war with the police.

It is a scene identical to the hectic days of apartheid, where black people in the townships lived in fear and anxiety.

They learnt to take each day as it came, since nobody knew what the next day would bring.

As in the past, a lot of people living in Merafong today are unable to go to work for fear of intimidation or injury resulting from the ongoing violence in the streets.

Children are losing out on schooling, given that learning and teaching at schools is often the most serious casualty in times of conflict.

Moreover, whoever is going to pick up the pieces in Merafong will also realise that the destruction of public infrastructure in the affected townships - especially in Khutsong - has set the area back by at least a decade or more.

Many public buildings, including libraries and municipalities, and businesses and homes of prominent ANC members and councillors, have either been vandalised or burnt down.

Thankfully, community members represented by the various factions have not turned on each other, resulting in the kind of deadly violence experienced in most townships in the late 1980s and 1990s. So far, most of the violence has been directed at the police.

The ANC, through its national leadership, has approached the IEC complaining about the intensity of political intimidation in Khutsong and its inability to campaign freely.

President Thabo Mbeki this week also instructed the security agencies to ensure that the elections in Merafong go ahead by clamping down on the protesters who have now gone beyond objecting to the demarcation, but are violating the constitutional rights of other citizens by not allowing free political activity.

There is no guarantee that the violence will not eventually pit residents against one another. Cracks in the community were revealed this week as the poorest people of Merafong - such as those residents living in shacks, and who are still hoping that their vote will get them a house and proper basic services - arrived at an ANC-organised rally prompting some members of the anti-North West lobby, which is also opposed to the election, to threaten to attack them and burn their shacks.

Although the ANC may now be unable to reverse its decision on the cross-boundary municipalities, the ruling party needs to sit down and reflect on the way it opted to deal with the issue.

Its approach ignored strong objections from residents in almost all the areas that were affected as a result of cross-boundary municipalities.

And in the case of Merafong, Parliament not only defied the will of the people, but it also went against the advice of the Gauteng government that had an interest in keeping the area under its administration.

For something like this to happen under an ANC government which is founded on the basis of democratic principles such as respecting the will of the people, is indeed worrying.

Above everything, the ANC should also reflect on the role its members, such as the local leadership of the South African Communist Party on the West Rand, have played in fuelling this conflict.

Despite the SACP's official position to support the ANC in these elections, its members in Merafong have always been in the lead in fanning the current conflict, and some among them have even stood as independent candidates for the election.

It is of interest that in almost all crossboundary municipalities, the ANC is at loggerheads with residents not because of the way it has performed in delivering services over the past five years, but because it has failed to listen to the people.

Moreover in Merafong, none of the opposition parties is sure they have the vote of the angry residents in the bag, as the general drive by the anti-North West group which clearly has an upper hand, is to ensure that the elections in the area do not take place.

But even if the elections do occur, the turn-out is likely to be very low and whoever wins will lack the legitimacy required to lead a community as fragmented as the one in Merafong and sorely in need of development.

This should worry all political parties, but mainly the ANC, which up to now has prided itself as the first legitimate government of South Africa.


 * Thokozani Mtshali is a political writer for Independent Newspapers.


 * From: http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=233&fArticleId=3126591**

1722 words, 2 articles