Listening to the silent majority

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I wondered in the meantime what had further happened in the melodrama in Lekoa between mayor Samuel Kolisang and his dissident vrrp councillors, who had locked hands with the opposition and the local Sofasonke troublemakers. I discovered that the beleaguered mayor had scolded his opportunistic colleagues, ‘Gentlemen, since we promised during the election campaign to meet the people from time to time, and since this is now happening with you deserting the party and voting against our own election promises, we have to go back to the community and discuss the situation with the people.’

Mayor Kolisang called a mass rally at the Georgetown Stadium in Sharpeville. An estimated 19,000 to 22,000 residents of Lekoa city showed up to hear him. Kolisang explained what had happened and obviously the people understood what dirty games were being played for personal gain. The people wanted to know who the 18 deserters from the vrrp were, but the mayor said that he would deal with the matter in an appropriate way and was not prepared to divulge their names for security reasons. He clearly seemed to fear a mob scene, so he cautioned the residents not to take the law into their own hands. But, Mr Kolisang al-

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so warned, matters in Lekoa had become a lot more complicated since the vrrp had scored a landslide victory.

Mayor Kolisang said also to the residents, ‘We will talk with them. We will try to convince them with sound arguments that they were wrong. We must at all times apply common sense, reason and logic. First of all, all parties involved in this controversy will have to familiarise themselves with the issues before us. The dissident councillors created a schism in our party and organisation. Their minds ran off with fantasies. They intended to use the Lekoa Town Council at random. They mistakenly considered Town-Hall motor-vehicles their private property. Official cars are not. People are paying for them. If I were to approve Town Hall cars for private use, I would have to offer 44 automobiles to all town councillors. These cars must be fuelled and serviced. That would cost too much money. People have already stopped their service charges to the council for four long years. Now, you are paying for the first time again, and we are not prepared to start misusing public funds.’

Service charges in Lekoa amount to 38 Rand per unit, per house, per month. This pays for refuse removal, sewerage maintenance, welfare, health care, clinics, in short for the general services communities need. Yet owing to escalating prices throughout the country, service charges rise, while town councils are continuously in financial trouble, even while in some places residents have begun to pay up again. Then there is the matter of large sums in arrears from the days when radicals were succesful in pressuring people not to pay their service charges and dues.

Soweto, for instance, is in debt to the tune of R1 billion and keeps slipping deeper in to debt as time goes by. The major problems of the largest township in the country are overcrowding, with an estimated 10 people living in each house; a shortage of some 66 000 housing units; an unacceptably low level of service provision, that constitutes a potential health hazard to residents: in particular children, the aged and the weak and infirm. Many Sowetans are unable to pay the current level of rent and service charges, even if they wanted to; therefore Soweto remains in the foreseeable future a seriously bankrupt township. Pretoria would like to see Soweto become self-financing and independent, but the all-black town has no real tax base, so this goal remains nothing but wishful thinking. There must be similar figures available for Lekoa and other townships.

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Mayor Samuel Kolisang realizes that these matters need urgently to be attended to. But, barely had he entered office when he was faced with a coup of sorts within his very own vrrp. As a practical politician, he faced these irregularities with outstanding courage and dealt decisively with them. It all goes to show once more to what extent South African blacks are ill-prepared to run their own affairs. Kolisang became severely handicapped and could not devote his time to the goals he had set for himself and his Party to serve the interests of the residents. The dissident apprentice politicians simply demonstrated that they never understood the true meaning of democratic government nor the context of the multiple tasks of a township councillor. Intellectually, they had obviously been insufficiently equipped properly to perform their tasks.

I wondered whether the residents of Lekoa city were aware of how fortunate they were to have voted into office a man with sound principles. Samuel Kolisang firmly believed that given the power structures in South Africa anno 1989, the only way he would be able to further the interests of blacks was by applying and following existing legal structures, and on this basis only could he negotiate with the government and its officials. Therefore, he strongly urged the electorate which had voted him into office, to start paying service charges again. ‘If you want me to settle the town council arrears,’ he told the residents, ‘you have got to begin paying us again. If you want me to settle the question of home ownership, you will first have to move away from the rent boycott. After this is done, we will join hands with you and work towards an acceptable solution. Once the service charges are paid up, we can enter into negotiation about your grievances with the authorities in Pretoria.’

Apparently, this was exactly what most people understood and accepted as reasonable, and so they voted Kolisang into office. People actually began to pay their service charges, but then the Sofasonke Party from Soweto, which had been behind the trouble in Lekoa in the first place, caused further disruption and confusion, as we will see in due course.