Category Archives: Ermelo

M&G: Profile of a town on fire

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http://mg.co.za/article/2011-02-28-profile-of-a-town-on-fire

Profile of a town on fire
KWANELE SOSIBO

The fear of police brutality is so tangible in Ermelo’s Wesselton township that it is hard to separate it from the blanket of coal fumes that floats in the quiet night air.

Paranoia, too, is palpable as we talk to a group of youths in a tavern in Phumula, near the epicentre of recent rioting. As they regale us with their stories, which are repeated during our stay in Ermelo, they take turns in heading to the door, making sure that no police are inching their way towards the nondescript drinking hole.

A skinny, dark-skinned kid, who calmly whips me in a game of pool later, tells me that they are being intimidated by the police. They sometimes herd locals out of taverns into the road and force them to roll home.

The obese woman behind the counter and her teenaged son eye the scene closely. The guys quickly gulp their last quart and disappear into the night. The next morning, as we head back into the township, we pass a crew of municipal workers removing damaged traffic lights on Mabuza Street. Opposite them are two armoured police vehicles parked on the grassy verge, keeping a watch on the intersection where rubber-bullet shells still litter the pavement.

The fibrous remains of burnt tyres lie in the streets like giant blemishes on a diseased skin, a metaphor for the township itself. Damage to municipal property from the town’s explosion was estimated at R350 000.

The number of young people cruising the streets, even though it is mid-week, gives the township a school-­holiday vibe. A youth we ask for directions to Thembisa, a section further north, offers to take us around.

Upliftment committees

We stop at a four-room house with coarse, greyish plastered walls on Mabuza Street, where 20-year-old Simphiwe Sibeko, a member of the Msukaligwa Community Committee (MCC), a group of upliftment committees that joined together in April last year, gives us her version of why Wesselton went up in flames. “We are fighting for jobs, nothing else,” she says, with her 15-month-old baby on her arm.

With a blanket wrapped around her torso, she reels off several common complaints — bribery for jobs, cracked houses as a result of coal-mine blasting and, of late, police who seem to fire rubber bullets indiscriminately. Outside the house where she rents a back room there is evidence of a fiery barricade, etched on the tarred street like a newly painted road sign.

“They shot at our house as well,” she says, pointing to a cracked window near the front entrance. “There were young kids standing around the yard and I was holding my baby. We had to run inside.”

She says the police are on a witchhunt and informants are helping them to compile a list of rioters. “The police come here calling out people’s names,” Sibeko says. “My uncle was detained, kicked around and tortured.”

Her zeal suggests the protests were the uncoordinated first steps of a baby learning to walk. Sibeko’s uncle, Sbusiso Sibeko, was arrested last Friday, under the pretext that he was a murder suspect. “I was beaten non-stop from Friday evening until 5.30 the next morning,” he says, speaking from a friend’s cellphone two days later. “They claimed they had footage of me committing acts of public violence but when I asked them to show it to me they refused. “They questioned me about my whereabouts and asked me to give them names of people that took part in the rioting.

“Then they said they wanted my gun. So they beat me until I told them that my father had a gun, which they went with me to pick up.” His father’s firearm was confiscated and he was returned to the police cells where he was held until the following Monday, when the charges against him were dropped. Sbusiso Sibeko claims he was severely beaten, hot water was poured on his head and he was kicked in the testicles.

Still traumatised and without a phone (which was allegedly also taken by the police), he was unsure where to lay charges, although he felt it would be futile. Nhlakanipho Dladla, a 16-year-old with a festering rubber-bullet wound on his elbow, says he and a group of friends were walking down the street from shops nearby when police tossed them into a van and drove them to the police station to fingerprint them.

Caught up in the crossfire

Further up the street in Thembisa, near the storefronts where the e.tv news crew was caught up in the crossfire, Mfanimpela Khubeka is eating chicken with some of his friends. He considers our request for a quick interview. A dark, muscular figure in canvas takkies, jeans and a matching blue shirt, Kubheka is young, charismatic and defiant. “Sure, we can talk,” he says, with a gap-toothed grin.

When I point to the police vehicles (a minibus and Casspir) in the middle of the vast tarred square, he gives them a dismissive glance: “I say whatever I want. I enjoy freedom of speech.” It’s a sunny day, so we walk across the yard and sit on the shady steps in front of Vuka Bottle Store, closed because the police, locals claim, emptied it of its stock.

“There is a curfew set for 7.30pm here,” says Khubeka, MCC chairperson. “Then they go from door to door looking for specific people.” The MCC, he says, has a mandate from the community and they engage with the mayoral council.

“Our memorandum has been growing and we are fighting against nepotism, bribery and for the mines to come up with employment strategies, skills development initiatives and youth economic development plans. We have the same manifesto as the ANC. We want a better life for all.”

Although municipal officials say they never received a memorandum from the committee, Kubheka says that he was on e.tv recently, brandishing a list of demands, dated January 27, which he says was signed by the municipal manager, Ace Dlamini.

On February 13, a day before the riots, the MCC held a community report-back meeting, which was followed later by a ward meeting in ward five, where the community began complaining about candidates being imposed on them. It seems that a combination of these two issues sparked the protests, although MCC members maintain ANC politicking is secondary.

Camp warfares

“As you know there are camps in the ANC — they want us to be involved in their camp warfare,” Kubheka says. “The community is trusting the MCC to deliver on employment strategies and other issues.” As my interview with Khubeka draws to a close, he finally reacts to the posse of young men camped around the square that doubles as a car wash. They have been tense all day but when a bulky policeman conducts a lengthy cellphone call outside the police minibus and appears to be scanning the area, they become increasingly fidgety and disperse. Kubheka and two friends follow, asking for a lift to a house down the road.

A tavern owner corroborates stories of random police searches and the “roll home” torture tactics. She complains that police have been beating grown men and now that she has cut her operating time to 7.30pm, she is no longer able to pay her suppliers every Monday.

Muzi Chirwa, the ANC regional council secretary, says he has never heard of the MCC and believes that if they exist they are allowing people with ulterior motives to hijack their agenda.

Although a lack of basic services is obvious in parts of Wesselton and would-be ANC councillors are clearly jostling for position, the way the police are said to have responded to the current crisis suggests the emergence of a repressive beast reminiscent of the National Party’s “crossing the Rubicon” days. After a day in Wesselton, one can almost picture the Groot Krokodil doing cartwheels in his grave.

Responding to allegations of police torture, Captain Leonard Hlathi, Mpumalanga police spokesperson, says: “If anyone is claiming to have been tortured, the Independent Complaints Directorate, as the watchdog of the police, is there to probe those allegations. It is no use for them to complain to the media. “All members of the South African Police Service are guided by the law and behave themselves in a manner that is responsible while carrying out their responsibilities. I know for a fact that our members have been behaving very well, even in this instance.”

Hlathi says that of the more than 120 people who were arrested in connection with the protest, all had been released and 58 were out on bail. On Wednesday he said that the situation was quiet. But the message from the MCC seems to suggest that this was just the quiet before the eruption of another storm. “We have told people to calm down because people out there know there is a place called Ermelo,” Ku­bheka says as a parting shot.

“National must come here from Luthuli House and talk to us, except for Gwede Mantashe [ANC secretary general]. He called us ‘good fools’ because he believes someone has bought us. How can someone buy a whole community?”

Sunday Independent: Ermelo residents see no reason to vote

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http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/mpumalanga/ermelo-residents-see-no-reason-to-vote-1.1029225

Ermelo residents see no reason to vote

Dianne Hawker

“We don’t care about Gucci and Prada. We just want delivery eKasi,” says a Wesselton resident after four days of heated, violent protests in the township near Ermelo, Mpumalanga.

It is Friday morning and he is one of scores of young, unemployed men walking the streets.

The anger in his voice is palpable. He spits the words “Gucci” and “Prada” out, referring to the penchant for fine things ANC politicians have acquired in their years of power.

The man, who identifies himself only as Nkosinathi, believes he will probably chastised and perhaps even killed for speaking out against the ruling party. This is Mpumalanga, after all.

“I’ve been receiving threats. People are telling me we are on a hit list because we are anti-revolutionary and anti-ANC. We are not anti-ANC. These are the very same issues that confront the communities of other areas. We want decent water, toilets and jobs. But (those other communities) are living in fear.”

Residents of Wesselton say they are no longer afraid. They faced off against police, some of whom used live ammunition, and most have lived to see the next day. One “comrade” has died. Solomon Madonsela has become a martyr.

What simmers here is an anger that has turned into a resolute decision: we will not accept this; we deserve better.

The signs of their struggle are not contained to one section of the sprawling settlement. Destroyed traffic lights, Telkom public phones, burnt containers and the tell-tale black smear left by burnt tyres can be seen throughout the area. Where there are no tyre marks, stones and glass are scattered on the road and pavement.

Nkosinathi spends his time with other angry young men. Some would call them militant. They are fiercely political. The call each other “comrade” and say they are fierce ANC supporters, but in the same breath vow not to vote for the ruling party – or anyone else – in the upcoming local government elections.

Community leader Dumisani Mahaye says he will make the proposal to thee community at a meeting to be held tomorrow.

Mahaye says the party, which has a majority of council seats in the Msukaligwa Municipality, should be “grounded like an errant child” by communities withholding their endorsement at the polls.

“The ANC has been promising for years. It’s been doing that since 1994. But it never lives up to its promises.”

Another “comrade” appears and joins the circle, saying the ANC’s approach doesn’t help, but arguing that the solution cannot be to vandalise state and private property. “Hasn’t the community learnt anything after 15 years? You can voice your anger, but it’s wrong to damage property. When we are angry we can’t break things that belong to us,” he says. Some nod in agreement. “The ANC angers people because it doesn’t engage them.”

There is a suggestion that 50 percent of all local jobs be retained for residents, both at the surrounding mines and in the council.

The circle is divided – some call for a 70 percent job quota for locals, while others say skills development is what’s really needed.

Mahaye goes so far as to suggest that councillor salaries be scrapped and that money be used for skills projects.

“People don’t work because they are not skilled. Why not take the councillor salaries and build something that will help people? What do the councillors do? People don’t see them. Why should they get paid?”

And older resident overhears the debate and offers his opinion. Having lived in Ermelo for more than 40 years, Jeremiah Khumalo is just as frustrated as the young men. His gripe is with a seemingly inefficient and uncaring municipality, which, he says, has ignored a request for technicians to be sent to his home to repair a burst pipe.

He takes us to his home, where water can be seen running from a hole in his driveway into the street. He scoops it out to show us the damaged pipe, explaining that he has reported it to at least three different people, including a clerk in the mayor’s office. Two months later, water still runs into the street.

Several streets away we are shown another property that has lost a large portion of its lawn to a growing body of water.

According to homeowner Moses Duma and several neighbours, council workers dug the hole “and just left it” in April.

Residents say children regularly play in the dirty water after school. Even more disturbing is the electric cabling which runs beneath the hole.

Duma says the hole was initially dug to fix a burst pipe. “They keep promising: they are coming, they are coming. But they don’t come.”

His brother Collin emerges from the house and tells us that a child nearly drowned recently. “The kids like to play in this water. I saw one of them nearly drown but I managed to get them out.”

Municipal spokesman Surprise Ngcongo said last week that the protests “had nothing to do with service delivery concerns as greatly exaggerated in the mainstream media”.

“Msukaligwa Municipality did not receive any written memorandum from the angry protesters relating to service delivery concerns.”

However not everyone in Wesselton is a “comrade”, hellbent on facing off with the state – headed by a previous generation of comrades, who many believe have forgotten their cadres.

At the small shopping complex that was the scene of violent clashes with police last week, we find Sibusiso Madi. Beside him are crutches; his foot is in bandages. He is not political, says he was not involved in protests, and just wants to return to work.

Madi is one of few residents who are gainfully employed, but today finds himself sharing an uncomfortable set of steps with the many unemployed youngsters who walk the streets of Wesselton.

“I was on my way to work. I was coming to catch my bus over there (he points at a nearby bus shelter). The police didn’t ask any questions, they just shot at me. I had to run away.”

What’s worse, as a result of the protests, Madi was trapped in the burning township from Monday, when he was shot, until Thursday. “No ambulance could come in. And the community wouldn’t let any cars in. I was prepared to pay R40 for a cab to go to the hospital. But they couldn’t come in,” he says.

As a result of the protest, he has lost out on the R1 600 he would have earned in a fortnight doing construction work on the N17 highway.

Selina Ngwenya is also just trying to get by. She sits on a pile of used coal, looking for pieces that can be used. She does not have electricity and uses the coal for cooking. “Sometimes we spend the whole day doing this. We have to look for pieces that are big.”

She also took part in the protest: “We want toilets, water and electricity.”

In Khayelihle, a new part of the township, none of the roads are tarred and there are a few green portable toilets in the area.

We see about five taps placed throughout the shack settlement, and residents are seen walking back and forth with containers.

A group of women, including Sibongile Khosi and Hlezipho Khumalo, complain that the portable toilets are often not collected for two weeks. They also believe the area needs more taps.

Will Khosi vote this year? “I won’t vote. Who will I say I’m voting for? How long have I been dirtying my ID book with stamps, going to vote? I don’t trust anyone.”