told me how he came up with the idea of supplying animal feed and medicine to subsistence farmers in the rural areas when he was a young and unemployed graduate. He approached the Department of Agriculture and received seed capital for the business. Three years later, AFMD had a wide client base over an area stretching a hundred kilometres in each direction and was growing into a sustainable business.
Another inspirational project was the Ikageleng Tshwaraganang ka Diatla Project in the Mokutu township outside Zeerust. The project was run by Florence Modisane, who used to be a local social worker. In 1999 she brought together a group of women from the community to fight the problem of drug-resistant tuberculosis. It started as a nursing group doing home-based care, but with the help of government funding, Ikageleng grew into a neat medical centre with 32 nurses, two food gardens, a soup kitchen, a crèche and even a laundry service. However, Ikageleng faced a reduction in government funding, and the results were visible with infrastructure falling apart. This was a problem for all these projects: once the government stopped paying, things deteriorated rapidly.
I also came across some terrible money wasting. A poultry and vegetable project in the rural Tlhatlagandyane Village, where I had to meet the tribal leader before being allowed in the village, bought a brand new tractor that no one knew how to drive, a computer without power and an abattoir with nothing to slaughter. Yet, the water pump was broken and the dam leaked. A medical care project in Lomanyaneny Village filled an entire hall with fancy hospital beds, even though consultations were always conducted at the patients’ homes. In both cases, the government agency responsible for the funding determined how the money should be spent without consulting the project managers. Project managers complained that they had to use up their budgets, even on useless things, otherwise the budgets would be cut the following year.
The projects had two things in common: heavy reliance on government funding and a dire lack of skills. There were no mentorship programmes to assist any of the project leaders – they all had to figure things out for themselves and learn from their mistakes. The consequences were most visible at Nkagisang, a land reform project outside Klerksdorp. On what was once a thriving farm, judging by the remnants of infrastructure, I found a few dozen discouraged beneficiaries sitting around with nothing to do. They complained that the government gave them the farm and then disappeared. They didn’t know what to plant where, how to manage livestock, where to sell their produce or how to maintain their equipment. All the machinery on the farm was totally dilapidated, the animals dead and the soil barren. The instigator of the land reform reportedly took a job in town and never visited again.
Impumelelo also organised conferences on service delivery issues, such as housing, water provision and job creation. At these conferences public servants were encouraged to share their ideas and learn from each others’ successes. My role was to arrange the facilities and click the mouse to change slides while speakers were presenting. Looking out over the audience, my impression was that attendees were usually more interested in the fancy accommodation (such as the Radisson Hotel in Cape Town) than in the discussions. Session attendance was usually poor, especially early in the morning and late in the afternoon. Yet the mints and writing pads on the tables would be gone by the end of the day. It seemed as if nothing came from our efforts, except for a pile of outstanding room service expenses which I was left to follow up, usually without success.
In stark contrast to the lethargy and apathy I encountered at government projects, great things seemed to happen at TSiBA, where I volunteered as a lecturer and tutor. TSiBA, an acronym for the Tertiary School in Business Administration, is a private initiative founded by four go-getters with a shared passion for education and a mission to improve lives. The institution was only a year old when I joined, but had already achieved amazing things. The students were confident, articulate and clued-up, the facilities were fancy and the staff motivated. The curriculum reached beyond conventional academic subjects and was tailored to address the issues specific to TSiBA’s students: ‘scaffolding’ subjects like professional communication, career planning and life skills were compulsory. The directors knew about every student’s problems and made great efforts to resolve them.
TSiBA wasn’t perfect. Several students dropped out, unable to cope academically or under pressure from their families to start earning money. Nonetheless, TSiBA improved more lives than 90% of the government projects I dealt with that year. The only fundamental difference between TSiBA and the government projects, as far as I could tell, was the instigators’ bloody-minded commitment to empowerment.
My contrasting experiences through Impumelelo and TSiBA left me sceptical about the ability of our government to effect real change. Though there were some amazing people in government doing wonderful jobs, there weren’t enough of them. Many state officials did not seem to have the desire to spend government money effectively and achieve the type of sustainable development that would lift people out of poverty. Without the right people our government’s development state model was destined to fail. This was a concerning realisation for someone who always assumed that, in the new South Africa, poor people’s lives were improving every day. The insight stuck with me, and no doubt contributed to a growing desire to become involved in the world of politics.
To appreciate the impact that the formation of Cope had on the South African political landscape and to understand why there was such hype around the party, one has to understand something of the political evolution of post-apartheid South Africa. The significance of the decision by a few ANC leaders to jump ship and to form a rival movement should not be underestimated. It’s only properly assessed in the light of the history of the liberation movement, post-1994 political rivalry, the ANC’s awkward attempt to accommodate all political creeds from centre-right to far left, the personalisation of politics, and, perhaps most importantly, in view of the great face-off between Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma.
The formation of Cope represented a great deal more than a mere political defection. To many, some of whom would never even consider voting for this new party, it represented a promise of change: a realisation that ‘things don’t have to go on like this forever’. Particularly to those who felt marginalised under ANC rule, Cope suddenly presented the possibility of an alternative.
For a number of ANC members, the birth of Cope was a vindication of growing unease about the direction in which their party was heading. For an even larger number of disempowered non-ANCs, it presented an opportunity to find a political home. And for a few politically discarded old-timers, it was a chance for a last hurrah in their fight against the ANC.
It was also relevant in the context of post-colonial African politics, which is traditionally seen as being plagued by one-party dominance, tribal rivalries and personal fiefdoms. It was an act of defiance against those who claim that blind loyalty to the liberation party is somehow an inherently African characteristic. Finally, and quite coincidentally, it saw Africa’s youngest political party challenge the continent’s oldest liberation movement at the poll.
Developments on the international scene also played a role in putting Cope in the spotlight. While the disaffected leaders who would later form Cope were holding secret meetings in smoky boardrooms to discuss their uncertain future, Barack Obama, on the other side of the globe, was pulling off one of the most incredible election victories in American history. His campaign demonstrated the value of grassroot support (on which Cope would later rely), and his enchanting oratory created a world-wide atmosphere of hope (an effect Cope would later try to emulate). Obama’s campaign was closely observed in many parts of Africa and particularly, given his heritage, in Kenya. Later in the same year, the governing party in Ghana was defeated at the polls in a historical election which was almost too close to call. When America elected a black president, suddenly anything seemed to be possible. Surely South Africans could also now vote for … well … not the ANC! Change was certainly in the air.
Hence the emergence of a splinter movement out of the ruling ANC occurred against a complicated historical backdrop at the southern tip of a continent struggling to come to grips with independence, and with an optimistic world looking anxiously on. All these factors
