Andries Tatane’s spirit will drive fight against ANC in Ficksburg

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The spirit of Andries Tatane, killed on live television by police for fighting for better service delivery, lives on in a small Free State town that has eschewed racial and class divisions to unite in the removal of the “failing ANC” with independent candidates.

The Setsoto Service Delivery Forum (SSDF) is confident it can cause the biggest upset of this year’s local government elections by capturing the Setsoto local municipality from the ANC after the 1 November polls. 

The Setsoto municipality, a gateway to Lesotho, comprises the peri-urban towns of Ficksburg (which is the seat of local government and the council), Senekal, Marquard and Clocolan.  

The SSDF was formed in Ficksburg, the town that gained infamy in April 2011 when police officers killed activist Tatane, 33, in full view of the SABC’s news cameras during a service delivery protest. 

Despite Tatane’s killing being broadcast, seven police officers, who were arrested on murder and assault charges, were acquitted in 2013. 

A decade after Tatane’s death, the SSDF will field candidates for all 33 available council seats, including 17 wards and 16 proportional representation seats. 

The SSDF’s candidates will be among the unprecedented number of more than 900 independents contesting the elections nationwide this year.

In the last municipal elections in 2016, the ANC won 21 seats; the Democratic Alliance five; the Economic Freedom Fighters three; the United Front of Civics three, and the Freedom Front Plus, one. 

Setsoto Service Delivery Forum volunteers cleaning the Hennie De Wet stadium that has been left neglected for years by the local municipality. (Oupa Nkosi)

How the SSDF began

The SSDF’s formation was a gradual development that began last year when founding members Selloane Lephoi and Laiki Coccosulis clubbed together to fix what they describe as the atrocious conditions and accelerated decay of their hometown. 

This was after Lephoi, who holds a bachelor’s degree in business economics and runs a financial consultancy firm, had last year given her annual analysis on community radio station Setsoto FM regarding the municipality’s dire financial situation, as contained in the auditor general’s 2018-19 report. 

The auditor general found that the municipality had incurred more than R620-million in unauthorised expenditure in only three years, which was the size of Setsoto’s medium term budget for 2016-17 to 2018-19. 

The report added that Setsoto, while doling out more than R200-million in salaries, including the municipal manager’s R2.4-million annual pay, had spent a measly R3.5-million on maintenance and repairs in the three-year reporting period. 

Lephoi, who has a deceptively soft voice, recalled how during her analysis she “lost her mind” in the radio station’s studio, threw her notes aside, and made an on-air call for volunteers to show up the following morning to maintain and repair their town. 

“I give regular expert analysis on different public financial reports, including the auditor general, and was fed up with detailing the same wasteful spending of the municipality every year,” Lephoi said. 

Her call to action was heeded and a campaign to clean the town began, with a team of volunteers, most of whom are unemployed or seasonal workers, assembled to do work that, essentially, fell within the ambit of the municipality. 

“They [the maintenance team] are our VIPs. They were the first to buy into our movement because they could see the long-term vision of what we wanted to achieve in our hometown,” Coccosulis added, with an evident glint of pride in his eyes. 

Coccosulis is a successful businessman, who owns farms and a ski resort in neighbouring Lesotho. 

The clean-up work included cleaning the streets, and recreational and sporting facilities, which had all but collapsed through years of neglect. 

When the Mail & Guardian pitched up to learn more about the SSDF and its ethos behind it, a maintenance team, which had not been expecting a media presence, was cutting the grass at the local sports complex. 

The complex is mainly used for cricket and football games as all other amenities, including the tennis, basketball and netball courts, have virtually collapsed, much like the town itself. 

During the M&G’s visit, a young man, who looked to be of schoolgoing age, was using cutters to strip what’s left of the fencing that surrounded the courts. 

To call the Olympics-sized swimming pool precinct dilapidated would be an understatement; rancid-looking green water adorns the pool, while everything else, including electrical and mechanical equipment, has been looted or destroyed. 

The Hennie De Wet swimming pool has been left neglected for years by the Setsoto local municipality and was forced to close down, depriving the community of recreational activities. (Oupa Nkosi)

The work of the volunteer team, led by Lephoi and Coccosulis, however, spurred the town into action last year, with businesses and residents providing financial and other resources that allowed the volunteers to receive a monthly stipend and equipment to revamp Ficksburg. 

This included a Ford dealership on McCabe Street, the town’s main road, which provided petrol for the brush cutters used to beautify Ficksburg. 

Fast forward to March this year, when farmers, farmworkers, spaza shop owners, teachers and ordinary citizens closed off the R26, which leads into and out of Ficksburg, and met to have lamb spit-braais as part of a protest against the horrendous state of service delivery in the municipality. 

Lephoi and Coccosulis said this was a peaceful demonstration and the first public show of strength in unity from the community. 

After the demonstration, it was collectively decided by the community that, even though they would not form a political party, they could, in a forum, contest the elections and engineer the change they wanted to see in their municipality.

Lephoi and Coccosulis are now affectionately known as “Mpho le Mphonyana” (Mpho and Mphonyana), after the world-famous conjoined twins, who were born in 1986 in Klerksdorp. They are virtually inseparable, and are recognised and received warmly across the town.

An atrocious municipality 

The appalling state of regional route 26 — more than 70 kilometres of road pockmarked with potholes that have mutated into gaping pits — and the unsanitary and inhumane housing conditions in the area, serve as a perfect illustration of the municipality’s disorder.

Despite only having 115 000 residents, according to Stats SA, Setsoto local municipality has the ignominy of having the most bucket toilets in the country — more than 7 000. This was according to the 2019 non-financial census of municipalities conducted by the national statistical service.

An apt, yet painful, example of someone who is subjected to lamentable living conditions in Setsoto is 66-year-old grandmother-of-three, Maria Maseloa. 

Maseloa’s RDP house, built in 2005, is one of many that is literally located inside a sewage trench. 

Stinking sewage flowing next to the 66 year old Maria Maselo’s home that often overflows to her yard and gets inside her house. She has pleaded many times to the Setsoto Municipality to be moved but nothing has transpired. She and her family members suffer from short breath that is caused by the intense smell. (Oupa Nkosi)

Because her home is at the bottom of Fickburg’s many hills, Maseloa’s house suffers from severe flooding when it rains. Leaking sewage,a permanent fixture of Ficksburg, also makes its way to her home. Outside, in what is meant to be a backyard, a puddle of excrement-laced water has pooled. 

So terrible is the situation that Maseloa has had to loosen bricks at the back of her house to allow water to gush out when flooding ensues, as it had the week prior to the M&G’s visit. 

“If my grandchildren and I die inside this house because of the flooding, what will the municipality say? I am prepared for the eventuality that this house can fall at any moment now,” a visibly emotional Maseloa said. 

“I had to build my own bucket toilet, with corrugated iron around it, because, as you can see, that front toilet was shoddily done. Do you know, my child, the pain of having to empty your own human waste every two days. 

“It is honestly the most inhumane thing I have ever done.” 

Choosing the best candidates

Lephoi said the choice of candidates, who are from different races and social classes, was an arduous but important process because they needed people who would get support from the communities in the wards they were contesting. 

“We used a system where we went to people individually to ask them: ‘Who do you want as your candidate?’ 

“It took much longer than we thought to come up with the candidates for each ward, but we are happy that we have the best people who are respected by their communities and qualified to do the work,” Lephoi said. 

“These were people who were already serving the community; people who did not need an elected position to assist their communities that live in a sea of underdevelopment,” Coccosulis chimed in. 

Lephoi added that the prospective candidates wanted nothing to do with politics. 

“We had to beg them to become candidates; literally all of them. One of our candidates was still refusing on the day we had to send the final list to the IEC. I had to call his wife and say, ‘please, tell this man to run. The community needs him.’

“So we begged people and told them that the community needed them,” she explained. 

Mohau Tsoeu’s uncle Andries Tatane was killed 10 years ago by police officers during a service delivery protest. Tsoeu is contesting the local elections under the umbrella of Setsoto Service Delivery Forum (SSDF) that the community of Ficksburg in Meqheleng township formed to fight against the ANC municipality that is doing nothing to better their situation. (Oupa Nkosi)

One of the candidates, who will be contesting in Ward 14, is Mohau Tsoeu, Tatane’s nephew, who told the M&G he eventually acceded to run in order to finish what his mother’s brother had started. 

“For me, he [Tatane] died, and I don’t want his death to be in vain. I believe that he is gone, but his spirit is still alive. 

“When I speak to the community during our campaign, I don’t promise people tenders and jobs through connections. All I want is for my community to get better services,” Tsoeu, 36, asserted. 

Selloane Lephoi (community activist) and Laiki Coccosulis (businessman) posing for a photograph in Ficksburg, Free State. Both Black and White community members have come together to work fix the neglected town and townships that the Setsoto Municipality. (Oupa Nkosi)

The severe unemployment among the youth would be eradicated, he said, by fixing the horrendous infrastructure in the municipality, which would bring much-needed investment and more businesses into the town, leading to the reduction of joblessness. 

Tsoeu contended that he spoke from a position of knowledge because he is an entrepreneur who started his own company, Alipro Security Solutions. 

“The youth are not working; there are no jobs. I want the youth to be involved in their future and partake in the process of creating jobs for themselves,” he said 

Lephoi said she was in awe of how Tsoeu had kept Tatane’s memory and activist spirit alive, and their ward 14 candidate was equally beloved by his community. 

“We spoke to Mohau and said: ‘The community respects you, and you have been the one person who has been vocal about a lack of change since [Tatane] was killed.’ 

“Because Mohau has been feeling that his uncle died in vain, he eventually agreed to run. In fact, he was one of the people we had to beg to be our candidate,” Lephoi added. 

Unity in action

The SSDF has united groups that are polar opposites on the racial and ideological spectrum. This included the Ficksburg Farmers Association and the Ficksburg Taxi Association. 

The SSDF’s chairperson, Morgan Barrett, also chairs the 71-member Ficksburg farmers’ association. Barrett said for the SSDF to succeed, they decided to run it as if it were a business. 

This included having a management committee, akin to a board of directors, which includes filmmaker Frans Cronje as the secretary. Cronje is the older brother of late Protea’s cricket captain, Hansie Cronje. 

Barrett, who is fluent in Sesotho, the most widely spoken language in Setsoto, acknowledged that race and class had to be set aside for them to unseat the “failing ANC” and fix their municipality. 

“That is why we have George Makhalanyane as the candidate in the predominantly white Ward 15. George is the best person for the job and is well respected across the municipality,” Barrett said. 

His views were echoed by Safatsa Selane, the 182-member taxi association’s chairperson, which outlined the economic impact on the transport businesses that he said was caused by the broken-down road network. 

“Many of our clients travel to and from the farms, and the roads here are pathetic. You buy a taxi today, and it is destroyed within two years. 

Ficksburg’s roads are badly damaged. Potholes are almost in all the streets. (Oupa Nkosi)

“The R26 is a mess; our township roads are disastrous. We tried to ask the municipality to do their job, and they did not listen. So we decided that it was high time that the Ficksburg community came together – no colour – all of us united as blacks, Indians, coloureds and whites,” Sefatsa emphasised. 

He added he was confident that the SSDF would unseat what he also called the “failing ANC” because the taxi operators and drivers were campaigning within their clientele and families to ensure victory for the nascent organisation. 

Funding and the forum’s future 

Funding for the SSDF is wholly dependent on businesses within Setsoto, Lephoi said. The businesses not only provide finances, she added, but one firm gave its truck to act solely as a de facto “municipal vehicle” to collect rubbish and waste after the daily cleaning from the volunteers. 

“The businesses went further to hire and buy equipment for us; brush cutters, chainsaws and garden utilities for us to maintain our town. Individuals also make monthly contributions into our kitty for us to be able to give an allowance to our volunteers. 

“So this funding model spilled over to the SSDF because we had a year-long track record to show what we can do with nothing,” Lephoi said. 

“Yes, the business community strengthened us in our maintenance and clean-up drive, but we explained to them that this would be pointless in the long run. We had to get in and govern the municipality through a forum. 

“We have to get control over the municipal budget in order to do a better job of what we had started, and businesses bought into that immediately. So it is the same business community that contributed towards the campaign.” 

A manhole left open next to the Soetwater Clinic in Ficksburg, Free State. (Oupa Nkosi)

Asked about the SSDF’s future and whether it would eventually consider going national, Lephoi said the organisation was focusing on engineering change in the Free State first before even contemplating whether or not to explore a national campaign. 

“The Free State affects us a lot, more than the rest of the country. Our entire problems in Setsoto stem from the ANC leadership of the Free State. 

“We are interested in different towns in the Free State starting their own forums so that we can become one. We hope that, one day, the premier of the Free State will come from one of the forums,” she explained. 

“But we are part of South Africa and want to see change across the country. So, we do hope that, when we succeed after 1 November, the SSDF’s model will be used as a template for the rise in community-led organisations, which reject political parties, countrywide.”

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