Andile Lili is objecting to the portable flush toilets that the City in Cape Town has provided to informal settlements.
They have been a thorn specifically when it comes to the issue of sanitationin Cape Town's informal settlements.
The pair first rose to prominence in 2010 when they were at the forefront of the war around the open air toilets in Makhaza, Khayelitsha, a fight they later won in the courts.
On June 3, Lili and Nkohla led an unorthodox service delivery protest in which they dumped human excrement on the steps of the provincial legislature in Wale Street. They followed this up on Monday and dumped another load in the reception area of the DA-led provincial government's offices on Greenmarket Square.
They object to the portable flush toilets that the city has provided in informal settlements to replace the bucket system. Lili and Nkohla claim residents do not want portable toilets, and would prefer flush toilets connected to a drainage system.
They reject accusations that their campaign is political and intended to make the province ungovernable, and instead see themselves as activists standing up for poor people "who are denied adequate and proper sanitation".
"It's not a campaign. It's not about electioneering or improving the fortunes of the ANC towards the election. This is a genuine concern about a gross violation of human rights, nothing else," Nkohla told the Mail & Guardian on Tuesday.
"It's immaterial whether it's the ANC governing or whoever is in power, we will raise this until it is resolved," he said.
In police custody
On his way to Parliament for the M&G interview, Nkohla was applauded and shook hands with parliamentary staff and politicians, including opposition MPs.
On Monday, Nkohla and supporters of the cause dumped the contents of two portable toilet tanks in the reception area of the Protea Assurance Building, which houses two government departments.
On the same day, Lili and more than 180 of his supporters were arrested at the Esplanade train station, on their way to Cape Town. On the train they were carrying excrement in plastic bags, stacked in milk crates.
Lili – who is still in police custody – gave letters to a friend to pass on to the M&G. He wrote: "My own record of the struggle shows that I have always operated within the bounds of law and have turned to the courts to vindicate the rights of the communities who sought my leadership.
"Our history has taught us that a vigorous and militant opposition to an oppressive racist order cannot be equated with anarchism, hooliganism and threats to law and order. Imbued with an abiding respect for legal institutions, I was instrumental in lodging an official complaint with the Human Rights Commission back in 2010."
He is referring to the lawsuit in the Western Cape High Court against Zille and others, challenging the adequacy of sanitation services and how this violated the right to human dignity, privacy and the right to a clean environment.
"Certainly these were not the achievements of hooliganism or political shenanigans to render the Western Cape ungovernable, but it's the DA's pig-headed approach and dismissive attitude that had given rise to our latest demonstrations around the denial of decent toilets," he wrote.
People's grievances
Nkohla (30) is a proportional representation councillor for the ANC in the City of Cape Town. He described himself as an activist and not just an ANC member. "I'm an activist even outside the ANC. I am not just voted in by ANC members, but also voted for by the people," said Nkohla.
He gets angry and animated when speaking about Zille.
"We didn't resort to that [the protest] because we are out of our minds; but there have been many protests by civil society organisations, nongovernmental organisations and others to the provincial legislature.
"Zille has never once come out to accept a simple memorandum of people's grievances," he said.
When asked for her reaction, Zille insisted that Nkohla and Lili and other ANC councillors are running a campaign to make the province ungovernable.
She said there was a "personal element" to the attack, as the ANC sees her as a threat to its attempts to win back the Western Cape in 2014.
Protests
"After their gross abuse of the Makhaza toilet saga in 2011 – a project in which Lili had been the council's paid community facilitator, promoting this project – both he and Nkohla were actually elected ANC councillors. There is absolutely no doubt that ANC councillors are at the forefront of these actions. Last time, when the ANC called for the ungovernability campaign to stop, it miraculously did," she said.
The ANC Youth League said on Thursday that it would not discipline its members who were involved in the protests.
Youth league national task team co-ordinator Magasela Mzobe said that though the league did not approve of the way the protest had been carried out, it understood the frustrations of those involved.
"Assuming that they didn't throw faeces, we wouldn't be here. They've written letters to the council, picketed to submit memorandums, raised the issue though public representatives … Which other methods were there because they don't have money to go to the court?" asked Mzobe.
He said members of the league had visited the protest leaders in prison, and said they "support their effort to expose the inability and unwillingness of the DA leadership to resolve the problems". They had also met with community leaders and said it was time "they changed their method of protest from that of faeces-throwing to a proper, fruitful and assisting method that would not lead them to be arrested".