Listening to the silent majority

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During a second meeting, this time at the Johannesburg Sun Hotel, of the mayors of Dobsonville, (CSN Nkatlo), Mohlakeng (CA Tekwane) and the former mayor of Soweto, Nelson Botile, and Letsatsi Radebe, former Chairman of the Sowetan Council, this time joined by the mayor of KwaThema, Matilda Mothlaping, I was discovering some disturbing activities of the Sofasonke Party of millionaire Ephraim Tshabalala in

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various townships around the Vaal, while apparently the Transvaal Provincial Authority refused to act against Sofasonke.^99.

I mentioned to the five assembled mayors and former mayors, that Mr Tshabalala had replied, when I asked him about some of Sofasonke's machinations in, for instance, Lekoa, that in modern politics all political parties should share in free competition in gaining the favour of the public. Mayor Matilda Mothlaping of KwaThema angrily retorted, ‘What free democratic competition is Tshabalala talking about? This man is truly playing with people's emotions. He says to people, without houses and living in shacks, that he will get them lodgings. Of course, he doesn't, but in the meantime, when you are desperate to get a proper house, you are liable to believe anything. The followers of Sofasonke are too often people without houses or jobs, who are opposed to paying the town councils the contribution for the council's services. They are the ones who hope to remain free of all obligations towards the community.’

I replied ‘How can Tshabalala as a private businessman become involved in all this?’ Matilda: ‘I doubt whether he actually is a millionaire, because he was not re-elected mayor of Soweto, because of the hundreds of thousands he owed the government in arrears. He himself refuses to pay rent for services to the council. So, how can he encourage his followers to do so? On the contrary, he tells the members of Sofasonke not to pay for town council services at all.’ ‘But, then, if that is true he is behaving as Party leader in a wholly illegal manner,’ I observed.^100.

Mayor Mothlaping: ‘That is exactly what it is. Therefore, I am very surprised, that the tpa is not calling a halt to these intrigues and stopping this man. In the Songhwe Township, for instance, Sofasonke told its followers to pay their contribution to services by the town council directly to the local Sofasonke Party representatives. Mr Tshabalala proudly calls himself the leader of the poorest people in the black townships. But, in fact, he is simply exploiting them. He makes them pay in addition 12 Rand for Sofasonke membership. Why, may I ask, does

99. One trustworthy black town council official suggested that the TPA deliberately sowed confusion and allowed all the lawlessness in order to prove that blacks were not at all ready to govern themselves.

100. In a later conversation with Ephraim Tshabalala, some of these accusations were refuted in a convincing manner.

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Sofasonke say that the Party employs over 30 lawyers to defend themselves? Defend themselves for what, against what?’ mayor Matilda Mothlaping asked.

‘Actually,’ said the mayor of Dobsonville, ‘it is much worse than Matilda says. People pay 15 Rand for electricity, 15 Rand for rent, 5 Rand as contribution for legal services to be rendered by Sofasonke, plus 12 Rand donation to the Party. Nobody accounts, to begin with, for this 12 Rand.’

‘Then it also goes into the pocket of Mr Ephraim Tshabalala?’ I asked. ‘Where else can it go?’ asked mayor Nkatlo. ‘For what is all this money meant? It's supposedly in part a donation. But where does the 12 Rand per person really go?’ ‘Do you have problems with Sofasonke in Dobsonville too?’ I asked the mayor. Mr Nkatlo, ‘Yes, we most certainly do. The worst thing is that Sofasonke takes the rent that should be paid to the town council for the services that are rendered, directly from the people. Members of Sofasonke go to their offices and pay their rent there.’

‘But, that is plain lawlessness. What is the Transvaal Provincial Administration doing about it?’ I asked. ‘Nothing, absolutely nothing,’ said mayor Nkatlo, and mayor Matilda Mothlaping and the others present unanimously confirmed this. Nkatlo: ‘The tpa knows exactly what is happening. Sofasonke members that pay town council dues for services into the coffers of the Party duly receive proof of payment from Sofasonke offices. They then show it to our people, that they met their obligations and paid already. We, of course, tell them, that they should go back to Sofasonke, have their money returned and pay us. But, that in practice is not what is happening. Sofasonke apparently has plenty of people working for them in all these offices to maintain expensive separate administrations for receiving illegal payments from the people. Where does Sofasonke get the money from to pay for all this? What is Sofasonke really up to? You can safely say, Sofasonke is engaged in mysterious operations in our townships, and they get away with it, not even using professionals.’ I failed to understand why the tpa condoned all this lawlessness right under their noses, if that is indeed what happened. For that reason, I telephoned Mr John Mavuso, because I very much wanted to hear his version of the developments since I had last spoken to him. But, as earlier reported, he reacted to my call with considerable irritation and advised met to ‘stay out of the matter entirely’.

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Nelson Botile: ‘Yes, the government takes no measures at all against Sofasonke. On the contrary, Sofasonke seems to receive all the time the full glare of publicity, but none of this we are telling you now, is coming out, of course. Ephraim Tshabalala is even allowed to say on television that people should be paying their rent to him. Now how can the mayors of townships administer their communities, when such chaos is allowed to persist and we as mayors get no assistance from anybody? So, in the meantime, the debts of town councils further accumulate, while the people expect us to negotiate with the government to have the debts written off. They expect us to do all this, and if we don't deliver, because we simply are unable to extract concessions from the government, they'll vote against us next time.’

Mayor Matilda Mothlaping took over, ‘How could we have these debts written off? If we were to do this, we would be ripping off those law-abiding citizens who did pay their service charges to the council. That would be very unfair. If one is going to write off town council debts, citizens who did pay their dues should be refunded as well.’

While listening to my black mayoral friends in the coffee shop of the Sun Hotel, I realised that never at any time during these three years in South Africa had problems of this nature surfaced during conversations with white South Africans. Apartheid questions do come up also at social occasions, but always in general terms and never in any detail. I think it is justified to say that the majority of whites in South Africa wouldn't be able to write three-page survey on the dilemmas with which town councils and black mayors are faced. When I come across a 78-page booklet, ‘The Struggle and the Future’, with the sub-title, ‘What black South Africans really think’, by Mark Orken, Director of the Community Agency for Social Enquiry in association with the Institute for Black Research,^101. and see what is being offered under the misleading caption of ‘black thinking’, I asked myself whether researchers like Orkin ever really sat down with a single black person. If they did, then this study, aimed at proving that a decisive majority of urban blacks support ‘some form of disinvestment’ as a means of ending apartheid, does not offer a single quote of one black man or woman, reflecting accurately what he or she was thinking. Orkin, and his learned friends, set out to produce a pamphlet to convince the reader that whatever an en-

101. Ravan Press, Johannesburg (1986)

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tire range of public opinion polls were saying was completely wrong. His finding was that 73 percent of metropolitan blacks favoured one or the other form of disinvestment. I for one don't believe a word of it, regardless of what pseudo-scientific source this overview has.

It is sad, though, that relatively few South Africans care. They are ignorant of the conditions in townships. It is foreigners that are loaded into touring-cars to be driven through ‘back door’ Soweto. South Africans look on townships as places to be avoided, as enclaves alien and exotic to them. When I telephoned a friend in Cape Town from the office of bishop Thomas Siyolo in Crossroads, he, who had come to the Cape forty years ago, confessed he had never visited a township in his life. I am, of course, against turning townships into places of attraction for anyone but after all, they are there. Townships are likely to be there for some time to come. No doubt, I have seen all over the world slums like parts of Soweto. Take a taxi from the airport to Caracas in the mountains and you will see kilometers of dismal slums. Bombay, Calcutta, Jakarta, Manila, the world is littered with sad places that supply sub-standard living conditions. But the time has come for white South Africans to take an interest in these matters and begin to observe at first hand, not only how the majority of blacks actually live, but take the time to sit with blacks, drink tea with them and listen to them. It will take many more years before all population groups in South Africa will truly communicate with each other. They might as well make a start, since they are most likely going to share this piece of real estate during the coming century as well.