Listening to the silent majority

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Mayor Samuel Kolisang of Lekoa dealt with the dissident councillors rationally and intelligently. He told them to return to their wards and explain their behaviour. ‘These men were elected in good faith,’ the mayor told me, ‘they were expected to protect the people's interests, but they lost no time instead in following up their own private interests in an effort to enrich themselves. They are actually apprehensive of returning to their electorates, because they behaved in a very unacceptable way. They did not live up to their mandate. They lost considerable support. Everybody in the township is on our side. People are aware what these councillors wanted to do and achieve for themselves. Everybody is with us. When they have fixed up relations with their wards, they can come back. It all goes to show that we must patiently learn to administer our own affairs, including the affairs of our political opponents. Democracy means, after all, that the rights of both the majority and the minority are properly administered and protected.’

I began to admire this 71-year-old politician from Lekoa. Mayor Kolisang felt responsible for the misbehaviour of councillors who had been voted into office under the wing of his VRRP. This unfortunate epi-

[p. 29]

sode had deeply affected him. I referred to the failings of democratic processes elsewhere in the world, and in particular in Africa. ‘We, in South Africa,’ Mr Kolisang said, ‘are surrounded by one-party Marxist states. The political situation in those lands results, no doubt, from the same deplorable mentality as I described to you in relation to events here. Duly elected councillors simply disregarded the electorate, which secured them their political posts in the first place. Election promises were grossly ignored. Selfish interests prevailed. They were willing to desert their party on a whim in order to pursue their own ways without, mind you, a proper mandate from their respective wards. Democracy and its modus operandi are a political system that must be learned. I guess this is precisely what we are now doing in Lekoa.’