As former minister for the Department of Cooperation and Development Piet Koornhof quietly shuffled of this mortal coil last week, an Eastern Cape man said he still had a question for the apartheid-era Cabinet minister.
Ben Mafani, who never met Koornhof, wants to know why he, his family and thousands of other people were removed from Coega outside Port Elizabeth three decades ago and dumped in Glenmore on the edge of the Ciskei.
Mafani said he had written a letter to Koornhof in 1978 to protest against the Coega removal, but police arrested him before he could send it.
Since the advent of democracy, Mafani has been writing letters to, among others, President Thabo Mbeki, the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development and the Public Protector — to which, he says, replies have been vague.
To draw attention to himself and his cause, he threw a rock through the window of the Grahamstown High Court in 2004. He was arrested and spent several months in jail, after which the case was dropped. But on September 7 this year, he was back on Grahamstown’s high street, with another rock — this one painted black (to show that the people of Glenmore were “sitting in a black place”), red (“meaning that our people are crying blood”) and white (“saying I need freedom in Glenmore”).
At his next court appearance on December 6 he will be represented by a senior counsel from the Grahamstown Bar, who is instructed by the Rhodes University Law Clinic.
Mafani seems deluded and the court would do well to slap him with a fine for malicious damage to property. Public acts of violence are no way to make a point, but short of a concerted and sustained letter-writing campaign to influential media, there seems to be few opportunities to make oneself heard. There may not be any easy answers to his question, but was anyone listening?
While it would be wrong to suggest that the African National Congress has not made giant strides in addressing poverty and inequality in South Africa, it’s not as if its predecessor set high standards. Anything would have been better than the last government.
What happens when people, or whole communities, fall through the cracks? According to Mafani, Glenmore has been forsaken, and some would agree that Khutsong also falls into this category. There is also widespread economic mismanagement in many municipalities, with many — led by those in the Eastern Cape — receiving qualified audits.
But again, as former president Nelson Mandela was fond of saying, there are plenty of able women and men in the government and the country without whom we would be the poorer. It’s a pity, however, that the bad apples spoil the effect. Former ANC chief whip Mbulelo Goniwe, fired for sexually harassing his administrative assistant, comes to mind, as does fraud convict Tony Yengeni.
In the run-up to the ANC conference in Polokwane, it seems natural to take stock of the affairs of the ruling party. You can hardly pick up a newspaper, turn on the television or the radio, or even speak to someone, without the damnable succession debate rearing its head. This dominates almost every aspect of life in South Africa, and while everyone is dying to know who’s going to be our new leader, some, like Mafani, seem not to have been heard above the clamour.
Less noise, more listening.
| FULL SPEED AHEAD |
NOT SO FAST |
Helen Zille
The mayor of Cape Town — and leader of the Democratic Alliance — is clearly working hard to keep the city on an even keel, despite being the target of an onslaught by opposition parties in the city council as well in the crosshairs of controversial expelled councillor Badih Chaaban. It can’t be easy. |
 James Dalton
One can’t help comparing former Springbok hooker James Dalton’s fall from grace with that of former boxing heavyweight champion Mike Tyson. While Tyson spent a day in jail this week for driving under the influence, reports said that Dalton had allegedly tried to drown his wife, Andrea, in a bath and smother her with a dress. Dalton has been linked to too many incidents of behaviour unbefitting a rugby hero over the years. |
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November 15 to 21
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