Darlington Majonga
Bloemfontein
FORMER president Nelson Mandela’s initiative to save thousands of South Africa’s ex-political prisoners from destitution is on the verge of collapse, the Free State Times can reveal.
The Ex-Political Prisoners Committee (EPPC), established in 1995 after Mandela led a reunion of South Africans who were jailed for anti-apartheid activities, has been debilitated by a lack of funding and internecine fights.
Only the KwaZulu-Natal wing of the EPPC is still running, with the rest of the provincial structures in limbo.
This was confirmed by Sibusiso Peter-Paul Ngwenya, a major player in the ex-political prisoners’ movement, in documents for an infringement case he has filed at the Bloemfontein High Court.
Ngwenya is the executive chairman of Makana Investment Corporation (MIC), founded in 1997 as the commercial vehicle of the Makana Trust which had been set up a year earlier to fundraise for the EPPC, then led by anti-apartheid hero Ahmed Kathrada.
In its formative years the trust, with the world-adored Mandela’s blessings, received millions of rands in donations which were meant to help integrate ex-political prisoners into a new, democratic South Africa by improving their educational, social, health and economic wellbeing.
To sustain its objectives, the Makana Trust then set up MIC in which it would have a 51 percent controlling stake.
Today MIC is a broad-based investment company with interests in broadcasting as well as a range of ventures spanning aviation, logistics and telecommunications.
The EPPC’s national conference in 1999 agreed that the organisation decentralise its operations by establishing provincial structures.
These provincial structures, it was agreed, would then start business ventures acting as MIC “subsidiaries” and in which MIC would have a 40 percent stake in return for financial support and mentoring.
Now Ngwenya has launched a legal battle to stop Free State businessman and ex-Robben Island inmate Ramakaudi Paul Ramakatsa – also known as Mpho Ramakatsa – and the provincial companies he contends were started under the EPPC ambit from using the name Makana.
The business ventures in question, also cited as respondents in the infringement case, are Makana Investment Free State (Pty) Ltd, Makana Women Construction (Pty) Ltd, Makana C&I Technologies (Pty) Ltd and Makana Infrastructure Developers (Pty) Ltd.
These companies were established in 2003, the same time that other provincial business entities such as Makana Investment KZN and Makana Investment Gauteng were established.
Ngwenya, in the court papers, however says the Free State companies no longer have anything to do with MIC because they were “closed down”.
“The operations of these commercial entities, including that of the second to fifth respondents, were all closed down due to a number of reasons, including the fact that there was a poor level of managing and that they did not submit business plans to the applicant for vetting,” he says.
Ngwenya, in his founding affidavit, contends that Ramakatsa has no “bona fide claim to the use and proprietorship of the Makana trademarks”.
“As is evident from the notice of motion, the applicant seeks that the respondents be interdicted and restrained from infringing the applicant’s registered trademarks by using the marks in the course of trade in relation to any of the goods or services the marks have been registered for,” he says.
MIC registered the Makana trademarks between 2006 and 2008.
Makana is the name of the first political prisoner, a Xhosa chief, to attempt to escape the notorious Robben Island jail in 1873.
He drowned while attempting to flee and ex-Robben Island inmates decided to honour him by naming their trust and investment vehicle after him.
In his responding affidavit, Ramakatsa says the companies had been established and used the Makana name and logo “with the assistance, consent and knowledge of the applicant, the trust and the EPPC”.
“Due to the fact that the provincial and national structures had the same object, being to generate income to benefit and support the ex-political prisoners and their dependants in South Africa, it was throughout agreed by the EPPC, as the founder of the Makana Trust being the main shareholder of the applicant, that the structures and its activities will all be identified by the name ‘Makana,’” he says.
“The business logo was also, since the establishment of all the national and provincial structures, used by all the structures, including the respondents.”
Ramakatsa says MIC forfeited its interests in the Free State businesses after allegedly failing to honour its “obligations” as agreed with the EPPC.
The case will be heard at the Bloemfontein High Court next Thursday.
It however turns out that there is more to the fight than just the Makana trademark.
Ex-political prisoners sympathetic to Ramakatsa believe the court case is a smokescreen for the real battle that has been tearing the EPPC apart.
It appears the problems for Ramakatsa started way back in 2006 when he, as the EPPC’s national deputy chairperson, and other provincial leaders of the organisation held an emergency meeting to oust Makana Trust chairman Tokyo Sexwale.
The meeting also demanded that the trust and MIC be accountable and explain why EPPC provincial structures were allegedly not “fully” benefiting from the investment company’s business interests.
David Moisi, who was the EPPC national chairman at that time, however distanced himself from the meeting which the organisation’s then secretary, Notty Ngcobo, also described as “illegal”.
A year later, Ramakatsa left his position as the EPPC national deputy chairperson after, according to Ngwenya’s affidavit, he “was found to have sexually harassed a female employee”.
Ramakatsa says the sexual harassment case was trumped up to “silence” him.
Since then, Ngwenya has apparently been trying to distance the Makana Trust, EPPC and MIC from the business ventures Ramakatsa spearheaded “for the benefit of ex-political prisoners” in the Free State.
In the meantime the EPPC’s structures elsewhere have also been disintegrating.
Of all the commercial entities established to take care of the EPPC provincial structures, only one – Makana Investment KZN – is doing well.
Incidentally, MIC boss Ngwenya comes from KZN.
“(MIC), currently, only permits Makana Investment KZN (Pty) Ltd to use the name Makana,” Ngwenya says in his affidavit for the infringement case against Ramakatsa.
“This is the only regional structure which has regular meetings with the applicants and Makana Investment KZN (Pty) Ltd has proper reporting structures, regular board meetings, regular financial and management reportings.
“It is important to note that Makana Investment KZN is managed by the applicant.”
Other provinces suspect Ngwenya has been channelling a large chunk of the MIC proceeds due to the EPPC to his home province.
This has left the EPPC tottering to its death, according to the organisation’s national deputy secretary Mpho Masemola.
“Since two years ago we have seen our provincial structures collapsing,” says Masemola, an ex-Robben Island inmate.
“We have been told many stories about the Makana Trust not having money for the EPPC’s activities and this is devastating.
“While we have been told there is no operational money for the EPPC look what’s happening in KZN . . .
“It’s only the KZN that’s fully functional because it’s supported by Peter-Paul because he comes from there.
“In the meantime comrades keep on dying as paupers because they can’t get help from their organisation.
“This is a joke and the mess has to be sorted out because we have people such as the president and deputy president as part of the movement.
“We were together at Robben Island.”
Masemola was apparently referring to President Jacob Zuma and Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe who were incarcerated at the infamous prison for their anti-apartheid activities.
Ngwenya could not be reached for comment.
Friday, June 17, 2011
SA's ex-political prisoners live in abject poverty
Darlington Majonga
Bloemfontein
SERAME Molefi is 56 but he looks much older than his age.
To keep himself warm on this wintry Sunday afternoon, he is clad in soil-stained khakhi trousers, a worn-out military-green polo neck, weather-beaten waterproof jacket and a floppy black woollen hat.
“Look at me . . . this is the only decent – if I can call it that – pair of shoes that I have,” he says, pointing with a trembling finger to his battered brown leather shoes.
Molefi, condemned to penury in a poor suburb in Bloemfontein, is one of the thousands of South Africans who were jailed for political crimes during the apartheid era.
In 1979, Molefi was slapped with a 10-year jail sentence for participating in what the apartheid regime termed “terrorist acts”.
After dropping out of a Bloemfontein school in 1975, he did not want to go back to the “farms” in Petrusburg where his father was struggling to fend for the family.
“I left my books and my future was bleak,” recalls the father of one, speaking in fluent English which he says he perfected while in prison.
“At 18, I was liable to pay tax and I just told myself I was not going to do that,” he says, choking up with anger.
“I was not going back to the farms and my only option was to fight.
“I was inspired by the Mozambique revolution, the 1976 uprisings and in 1977 Steve Biko died.
“The struggle was my home, I was convinced . . . and in 1978 I left for Swaziland to join a training camp so that I could play my part in forcibly removing the evil regime.”
The following year he was arrested and sentenced to 10 years for his political activities.
On appeal, Molefi’s sentence was halved to five years.
He served part of his sentence at Robben Island, the infamous prison where South Africa’s first democratically elected president, Nelson Mandela, spent 27 years.
Life only got tougher for Molefi when he was released from prison in 1984.
Every time he got a job, his employers would be “pressured” to ditch him because he was seen as a troublemaker.
“I briefly worked at Metro through the influence of my uncle where I was introduced to merchandising, stock counting and stock control,” he says.
“The police special branch then visited and asked the management why I was employed there.
“I was expelled, after working for only six months, because I was a political activist . . .
“This was also the time trade unions were mushrooming.”
A stint at Coca-Cola suffered a similar fate, Molefi says.
For the next 20 years, he was either unemployable or simply could not find a job.
His only relief came in 2004 when the EPPC Free State leadership pleaded with the provincial government to give him a security job within the then public works, roads and transport department.
But for the past four years he has had to scrounge for food and money to foot his medical bills – he suffers from the skin disease eczema which he says he contracted at Robben Island.
“Having suffered so much makes me bitter,” Molefi says.
His is not the lifestyle befitting a man who sacrificed his future for a free South Africa, he reckons.
After surviving torturous years behind bars, dozens of former political prisoners are fast losing hope they can conquer their latest battle – poverty and disease.
More than half of the 60-plus members of the Ex-Political Prisoners Committee (EPPC)’s Free State wing are jobless and struggling to put food on the table.
The organisation estimates the total number of South Africa’s ex-political prisoners is up to 5 000.
HIV and other chronic illnesses are wreaking havoc among the anti-apartheid heroes.
The EPPC, formed after Mandela led a reunion of ex-political prisoners at Robben Island in 1995, says approximately 40 percent of its members are disabled or chronically ill.
Only a few of the ex-political prisoners in the Free State, among them former Mangaung mayor Playfair Morule and education MEC Tate Makgoe, can be said to be probably enjoying comfortable lives.
The majority of them are languishing in abject poverty, according to EPPC Free State secretary Mpho Ramakatsa.
A handful of them receive an average of R600 a month – enough to buy 10kgs of beef – from the special government pension fund for struggle veterans who were at least aged 35 in 1994.
Yet they, including many other ex-political prisoners who cannot qualify for the pension, have to foot electricity and water bills as well as medical and school fees.
What makes the “forsaken comrades” bitter is that the Makana Trust – set up in 1996 to help thousands of South Africa’s ex-political prisoners and their dependants – has allegedly forsaken them.
The trust has a business arm, Makana Investments Corporation (MIC), which was established to make money for the education, healthcare and general welfare of former prisoners and their dependants.
EPPC national deputy secretary Mpho Masemola this week admitted the organisation had let down its members.
He says “comrades keep on dying because they can’t get help from their organisation”.
“I’ve been betrayed! Why can’t they live up to their promises?” says Molefi.
Before he even finishes saying this, tears are already welling up in his bloodshot eyes.
For Sechaba Moahloli, 54, his destitution has come at a huge cost: separation from the mother of his two young children who is working as a nurse in Cape Town, 1 200km from Bloemfontein.
He is a former commander of one of the uMkonto weSizwe camps set up by the ANC’s military wing in Angola during the apartheid era.
Moahloli was arrested in 1987 for trying to launch attacks against South Africa’s then racist government and incarcerated at Robben Island until his release on April 6 1991.
That was a year after Mandela, who was jailed for 27 years, was released from the notorious prison.
Moahloli was hoping their years of sacrifice would be rewarded with a better life under a democratically elected government.
He says he has been tempted many times to engage in criminal activities to fend for himself.
Moahloli was last employed in 2007 as office manager at the Free State’s then public safety and security department.
Gilbert Moshou, 47, who spent four years at Grotvlei Maximum Prison for politically motivated crimes, believes their plight would have been alleviated if the Makana Trust was serving the purposes it was formed for.
What worries him now is that the companies formed by the EPPA Free State are struggling for survival, especially with MIC engaged in a legal fight with the provincial business entities.
Moshou, a father of one whose wife suffers from diabetes and high blood pressure, has never had a permanent job since he was released from prison in 1989.
He has relied on piece jobs with the ex-political prisoners’ projects in the Free State to eke out a living.
“There are many days when I go to bed without eating anything,” says Moshou, showing an old water tap he intends to sell to scrap-metal collectors.
“This is copper so if I sell it I will have some money for food.
“At least today I have five potatoes for my sechabo (normally a meat or vegetable dish eaten with pap, a stiff maize-meal mix which is South Africa’s major staple food).”
MIC has filed an application at the Bloemfontein High Court to stop the EPPC Free State from using the name Makana for any f its companies.
This comes after the Free State structure said MIC had forfeited its interests in the provincial projects because it had allegedly failed to honour its obligations.
According to Ramakatsa, who leads Makana projects in the province, MIC was supposed to provide financial assistance and mentoring to the Free State companies.
People like Molefi now allege only a few, mostly MIC executives, are enjoying lavish lifestyles thanks to the ex-political prisoners’ business wing’s ventures.
What aggravates his ire is that he has also allegedly not received what he was promised after appearing before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
The TRC was a court-like restorative justice body set up by Mandela after the end of South Africa’s 300 years of supremacist white-minority rule.
It recommended education, housing, healthcare and welfare support for all apartheid victims who testified.
“Where is the TRC? Why are they not living up to the promises?” Molefi says, trembling with anger.
“Now also the (Makana Trust) office run by revolutionaries of the past does not care.
“Why are the national leaders not calling them to account?”
For now, he says, he is grateful Ramakatsa and the EPPC businesses in the Free State have been able to assist them in some instances.
Bloemfontein
SERAME Molefi is 56 but he looks much older than his age.
To keep himself warm on this wintry Sunday afternoon, he is clad in soil-stained khakhi trousers, a worn-out military-green polo neck, weather-beaten waterproof jacket and a floppy black woollen hat.
“Look at me . . . this is the only decent – if I can call it that – pair of shoes that I have,” he says, pointing with a trembling finger to his battered brown leather shoes.
Molefi, condemned to penury in a poor suburb in Bloemfontein, is one of the thousands of South Africans who were jailed for political crimes during the apartheid era.
In 1979, Molefi was slapped with a 10-year jail sentence for participating in what the apartheid regime termed “terrorist acts”.
After dropping out of a Bloemfontein school in 1975, he did not want to go back to the “farms” in Petrusburg where his father was struggling to fend for the family.
“I left my books and my future was bleak,” recalls the father of one, speaking in fluent English which he says he perfected while in prison.
“At 18, I was liable to pay tax and I just told myself I was not going to do that,” he says, choking up with anger.
“I was not going back to the farms and my only option was to fight.
“I was inspired by the Mozambique revolution, the 1976 uprisings and in 1977 Steve Biko died.
“The struggle was my home, I was convinced . . . and in 1978 I left for Swaziland to join a training camp so that I could play my part in forcibly removing the evil regime.”
The following year he was arrested and sentenced to 10 years for his political activities.
On appeal, Molefi’s sentence was halved to five years.
He served part of his sentence at Robben Island, the infamous prison where South Africa’s first democratically elected president, Nelson Mandela, spent 27 years.
Life only got tougher for Molefi when he was released from prison in 1984.
Every time he got a job, his employers would be “pressured” to ditch him because he was seen as a troublemaker.
“I briefly worked at Metro through the influence of my uncle where I was introduced to merchandising, stock counting and stock control,” he says.
“The police special branch then visited and asked the management why I was employed there.
“I was expelled, after working for only six months, because I was a political activist . . .
“This was also the time trade unions were mushrooming.”
A stint at Coca-Cola suffered a similar fate, Molefi says.
For the next 20 years, he was either unemployable or simply could not find a job.
His only relief came in 2004 when the EPPC Free State leadership pleaded with the provincial government to give him a security job within the then public works, roads and transport department.
But for the past four years he has had to scrounge for food and money to foot his medical bills – he suffers from the skin disease eczema which he says he contracted at Robben Island.
“Having suffered so much makes me bitter,” Molefi says.
His is not the lifestyle befitting a man who sacrificed his future for a free South Africa, he reckons.
After surviving torturous years behind bars, dozens of former political prisoners are fast losing hope they can conquer their latest battle – poverty and disease.
More than half of the 60-plus members of the Ex-Political Prisoners Committee (EPPC)’s Free State wing are jobless and struggling to put food on the table.
The organisation estimates the total number of South Africa’s ex-political prisoners is up to 5 000.
HIV and other chronic illnesses are wreaking havoc among the anti-apartheid heroes.
The EPPC, formed after Mandela led a reunion of ex-political prisoners at Robben Island in 1995, says approximately 40 percent of its members are disabled or chronically ill.
Only a few of the ex-political prisoners in the Free State, among them former Mangaung mayor Playfair Morule and education MEC Tate Makgoe, can be said to be probably enjoying comfortable lives.
The majority of them are languishing in abject poverty, according to EPPC Free State secretary Mpho Ramakatsa.
A handful of them receive an average of R600 a month – enough to buy 10kgs of beef – from the special government pension fund for struggle veterans who were at least aged 35 in 1994.
Yet they, including many other ex-political prisoners who cannot qualify for the pension, have to foot electricity and water bills as well as medical and school fees.
What makes the “forsaken comrades” bitter is that the Makana Trust – set up in 1996 to help thousands of South Africa’s ex-political prisoners and their dependants – has allegedly forsaken them.
The trust has a business arm, Makana Investments Corporation (MIC), which was established to make money for the education, healthcare and general welfare of former prisoners and their dependants.
EPPC national deputy secretary Mpho Masemola this week admitted the organisation had let down its members.
He says “comrades keep on dying because they can’t get help from their organisation”.
“I’ve been betrayed! Why can’t they live up to their promises?” says Molefi.
Before he even finishes saying this, tears are already welling up in his bloodshot eyes.
For Sechaba Moahloli, 54, his destitution has come at a huge cost: separation from the mother of his two young children who is working as a nurse in Cape Town, 1 200km from Bloemfontein.
He is a former commander of one of the uMkonto weSizwe camps set up by the ANC’s military wing in Angola during the apartheid era.
Moahloli was arrested in 1987 for trying to launch attacks against South Africa’s then racist government and incarcerated at Robben Island until his release on April 6 1991.
That was a year after Mandela, who was jailed for 27 years, was released from the notorious prison.
Moahloli was hoping their years of sacrifice would be rewarded with a better life under a democratically elected government.
He says he has been tempted many times to engage in criminal activities to fend for himself.
Moahloli was last employed in 2007 as office manager at the Free State’s then public safety and security department.
Gilbert Moshou, 47, who spent four years at Grotvlei Maximum Prison for politically motivated crimes, believes their plight would have been alleviated if the Makana Trust was serving the purposes it was formed for.
What worries him now is that the companies formed by the EPPA Free State are struggling for survival, especially with MIC engaged in a legal fight with the provincial business entities.
Moshou, a father of one whose wife suffers from diabetes and high blood pressure, has never had a permanent job since he was released from prison in 1989.
He has relied on piece jobs with the ex-political prisoners’ projects in the Free State to eke out a living.
“There are many days when I go to bed without eating anything,” says Moshou, showing an old water tap he intends to sell to scrap-metal collectors.
“This is copper so if I sell it I will have some money for food.
“At least today I have five potatoes for my sechabo (normally a meat or vegetable dish eaten with pap, a stiff maize-meal mix which is South Africa’s major staple food).”
MIC has filed an application at the Bloemfontein High Court to stop the EPPC Free State from using the name Makana for any f its companies.
This comes after the Free State structure said MIC had forfeited its interests in the provincial projects because it had allegedly failed to honour its obligations.
According to Ramakatsa, who leads Makana projects in the province, MIC was supposed to provide financial assistance and mentoring to the Free State companies.
People like Molefi now allege only a few, mostly MIC executives, are enjoying lavish lifestyles thanks to the ex-political prisoners’ business wing’s ventures.
What aggravates his ire is that he has also allegedly not received what he was promised after appearing before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
The TRC was a court-like restorative justice body set up by Mandela after the end of South Africa’s 300 years of supremacist white-minority rule.
It recommended education, housing, healthcare and welfare support for all apartheid victims who testified.
“Where is the TRC? Why are they not living up to the promises?” Molefi says, trembling with anger.
“Now also the (Makana Trust) office run by revolutionaries of the past does not care.
“Why are the national leaders not calling them to account?”
For now, he says, he is grateful Ramakatsa and the EPPC businesses in the Free State have been able to assist them in some instances.
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