No comfort for burning Khutsong

Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi continues to fiddle while Khutsong burns. As anti-incorporation protests turned violent this week, the minister sent residents a message that can only inflame their anger.

After weeks of peaceful demonstration against the town’s removal from Gauteng to North West under cross-border municipality legislation, youths this week looted shops and property belonging to Somali and Pakistani traders and petrol-bombed police vehicles.

At the weekend, residents launched a consumer boycott, following a one-day boycott by taxi drivers and a school boycott which enters its seventh week next week.

At a media conference in Cape Town on Thursday, Mufamadi said he had tabled a Bill in Parliament to amend the Cross-­boundary Municipalities Laws Repeal and Related Matters Act of 2005. However, this would have no effect on the fate of Khutsong as his department had done everything in its power to ensure proper consultation about the town’s incorporation.

Defending the government’s apparent inaction over the ongoing crisis, he said: ‘I gave personal attention to the people of Khutsong. In November 2005, I invited people from the community to meet with me in a special meeting. I’m surprised that people would be ignorant of that process.”

The Bill Mufamadi has tabled represents a first step towards amending the participatory process required to correct boundary anomalies in ­KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape. It follows a Constitutional Court judgement in August last year, which declared the transfer of the Matatiele Municipality from KwaZulu-Natal to the Eastern Cape invalid.

The invalidity was suspended for 18 months, pending public participation, meaning that Matatiele remains in the Eastern Cape until that period ends.

Mufamadi was adamant that there was nothing further his department could do about Khutsong. He said residents should pursue the option of approaching the Constitutional Court.

Khutsong, which falls under the Merafong local municipality, has been a part of North West province since last year, a move that is seen to have adversely affected health and education services in the municipality.

Mufamadi said only a faction in Khutsong had decided to challenge the incorporation of Merafong, and they were welcome to do so. ‘As far as we are concerned, the challenge is not yet formal and, until so, the ­status quo prevails.”

Nkosiphendule Kolisile, Khutsong activist and Gauteng chairperson of the SACP, said Mufamadi had not revealed what happened at his November 5 2005 meeting with representatives of Merafong, including former West Rand executive mayor Bernard Ncube, and was misleading the people.

Kolisile said Merafong representatives had been unequivocal in demanding that the minister reverse the incorporation decision. They had maintained this stance at further meetings, including one in Luthuli House on November 10, and at a public hearing on November 25 in Merafong.

‘He speaks as though the views of the people were ambiguous, or as if we agreed with him,” said Kolisile. ‘There has always been clarity from us on this issue.”

On Wednesday night a Mail & Guardian reporter watched as, less than a kilometre from the Khutsong police station, youths who had taken over the township looted the Score Supermarket and barricaded the roads. They demanded money from motorists to buy petrol to manu­facture petrol bombs.

The police dispersed the crowd and arrested a few youths, but later left, allowing the rioters to continue looting.

On Thursday rocks, bricks and filth were strewn across the eerily quiet streets of the township, which were patrolled occasionally by armoured police vehicles.

Large crowds had left in minibus taxis in the morning for nearby Potchefstroom to attend the disciplinary hearing of protest leader Jomo Mogale.

Mogale, a local teacher, is facing department of education charges of instigating the boycotts and intimidating a fellow teacher.

He is one of four teachers who have been suspended by North West for their alleged role in the demonstrations. Other principals in the area have been asked to explain to the department why they had refused to attend meetings it convened.

Spaza shops owned by Somalis and Pakistanis seemed to have suffered the most damage in Wednesday’s attacks. One, perhaps 200m from the police station, was still smouldering after an arson attack.

Children of schoolgoing age were playing and shouting on the roof of an overturned bus shelter that lay on the tarmac.

Moratehi Mogale (14) said he spends the day playing with his friends near Khutsong Stadium. ‘Other children are going to school while we are not studying at all,” he said. ‘Our parents say: ‘No Gauteng, no school’. They say the schools in North West don’t have enough money.”

Close to the stadium, Timello Melato and Ratile Sefoloko from Matatiele said they had been in Khutsong for the past six weeks on a ‘learning mission”. ‘We should unite, as we are fighting the same battle. We are comparing notes and we are resolved to fight to the end,” Melato said. ‘We want to make our government listen to us,” Sefoloko added, praising the courage of the residents of Khutsong.

In another part of the township, a woman who refused to be identified was salvaging roof sheets as workmen repaired her property, which was gutted by fire on Wednesday night. ‘It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you, but I am shocked by the destruction of my family property,” she said of the shop she had leased out to Pakistani nationals. ‘Fridges, shelves and other equipment were burnt.”