/ 24 June 2011

Reconnecting the hot spots

Reconnecting The Hot Spots

Bobo Makhoba is smoking. Over the cigarette outside the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee’s (SECC) offices on Chris Hani Road in the sprawling township, he ponders the possibility of quickly heading over to Noordgesig. Residents there have been protesting against electricity cut-offs and have been involved in running clashes with police. The idea, he said, “would be to see what could be done to work together”.

But he is refused a car on the basis that there is no direct relation between the events in Noordgesig, not far from Soweto, and the organisation’s core focus.

Established in 2000, the organisation shot to prominence a decade ago after its Operation Vula Zonke campaign illegally connected electricity to thousands of Sowetans whose supply had been cut off by Eskom for non-payment.

“Our philosophy was simple,” said Makhoba, who joined the committee soon after it was established. “If they switched your supply off, we lit it back on. We put a team of ‘technicians’ together. I didn’t know anything about electricity but I ended up becoming an expert.

“We faced some arrests, but in some cases the cops would say: ‘I have also been disconnected. So can you just connect for me and I will let you go.'”

One gets the sense that Makhoba, then the committee’s organiser, is happier in the trenches, happier in hot spots such as Noordgesig where the action is, rather than pushing paper, which is what he had to go back to doing. He excused himself from a meeting with the Mail & Guardian to prepare reports for himself and his fellow office-bearers ahead of the committee’s annual general meeting. But at the meeting, the secretary, treasurer, organiser and administrator all had to read out their reports to delegates as no hard copies were distributed to attendees. A last-minute photocopying glitch was cited as the problem.

Pressed for details by delegates, Makhoba said there were currently 36 branches of the SECC, but only nine were functional. The organisation had thousands of members throughout Soweto. Treasurer Charlotte Vezi was placed under similar pressure to account for the organisation’s spending. She reeled off some vague numbers. The discontent, although muted, hung heavy in the dark, vast hall where more than 100, mostly middle-aged and elderly, members had gathered.

When it was time to elect members, Makhoba, the outgoing organiser, pointed out that the organisation’s constitution held that his position, the co-ordinator’s and the administrator’s were not contested in the elections but dealt with separately by the committee. More grumbling followed.

Makoma Lekalala from Earthlife Africa, who was conducting the elections, quickly perused the constitution and pronounced it “silent” on the matter, but the organiser, the administrator and the co-ordinator were shielded anyway.

The following Tuesday, after a committee meeting, Makhoba emerged as the new co-ordinator. Zodwa Madiba, who chaired the AGM and had previously represented the affiliated Operation Khanyisa Movement as party representative, was named the new organiser. Makhoba, I discovered, is a controversial figure in the SECC. Some view him as “rude” and “bossy”, whereas others regard him as “politically mature” and “vibrant” in an organisation struggling to pull the youth into its ranks.

Born in 1975 in KwaNongoma in KwaZulu-Natal, Makhoba did most of his schooling in Soweto, first encountering politics as a high-school student recruited into the Pan African Students Organisation. In the early Nineties, after high school, he took on a string of casual jobs, supplementing the meagre income with gambling.

He joined the SECC after running into former school comrades such as the late Bongani Lubisi, whose mentoring had a huge impact on him. “Electricity was one of the basic necessities we were fighting for and the number of cut-offs then was ridiculous,” he said.

In 2003, Makhoba was suspended from the organisation after he was alleged to be part of a clique that was receiving money for reconnecting electricity, a service the SECC was known to provide free of charge.

In the four years he was away from the organisation, he worked, ironically, at Eskom’s Mpumalanga cooling plants before resigning after he was forced to serve under a less experienced white employee.

Today, an unmarried father of two, he continues to supplement his income with a “plan B” that he won’t reveal. Regardless of the friction in the organisation, it is clear that as a former organiser and current co-ordinator, Makhoba is a key part of the group’s legacy.

In Ficksburg, Dikeledi Manana of the Meqheleng Concerned Citizens group spoke of how inspired and invigorated she was after meeting him in Soweto earlier this year and observing him prepare ahead of one of the organisation’s rallies.

But the committee is a weaker formation than it was five years ago. Trevor Ngwane, a previous organiser, said this was part of the general decline of social movements. In the committee’s case, however, the more electricity it connected for people, the more it became a service, leading to a decline in its vigour as a movement. Also, Eskom had drastically reduced its rate of cut-offs as it changed its strategy.

In the SECC, the wiry Makhoba, usually dressed in All-Star tackies, slacks and a precariously tilted beanie, is among the last of a dying breed: a streetwise, politically savvy (he is a keen Marxist) young man less concerned with a materialistic lifestyle than with connecting with all who struggle in this country.

“What I’m getting here still satisfies me, even though it is not much. I’m able to patch here and there,” he says of his salary, which does not exceed R3 000 a month.

“I have no dreams of working for the white man. What I am afraid of is working in a situation with no benefits, which will negatively affect my children. “I just want an affordable life, to be able to pay for bus fare and food.”

This year, Makhoba has plans to publish a book of political poems, which he believes could help to strengthen the organisation’s legacy.

Kwanele Sosibo is the Eugene Saldanha fellow in social justice reporting, sponsored by CAF Southern Africa