More than 1000 Middledrift community members braved the heat to attend a march against gender-based violence led by social development MEC Nancy Sihlwayi yesterday, after National Assembly speaker Baleka Mbete arrived too late to lead proceedings as scheduled.
The crowd had waited eagerly for Mbete’s arrival for more than five hours after the scheduled start to no avail.
Mbete was supposed to lead the march to the local police station at 11am and was scheduled to deliver the Charlotte Maxeke memorial lecture at 2pm but eventually only took to the podium at 6pm.
The crowd that was anxiously waiting for her showed their displeasure when it was announced she was running late after opening a creche in Fort Beaufort earlier yesterday.
When the march eventually started at 2.20pm, with Sihlwayi leading it in place of Mbete, more than 500 people joined in and sang pro-ANC and President Jacob Zuma songs.
The Daily Dispatch was reliably informed that Mbete opted for lunch at a fellow comrade’s house in Alice.
A group of elderly women inside the hall were overheard saying the wait was one of the reasons the party “was losing numbers in this area”.
“This shows us that our leaders do not care much about us on the ground,” an elderly Nozibele Mali said.
Among those who were kept waiting were MPs, MPLs, a choir of female inmates from correctional services and religious leaders.
Some department officials even confided to the Dispatch that they were confused as to whether this was an ANC event or the department’s.
When Mbete finally took the podium after 6pm to deliver the Charlotte Maxeke lecture, she said Maxeke was “an exceptional woman, whose very action was expressive of her extraordinary intellect, determination, courage, dedication to the highest ideals, principles and love of God”.
“She is known as the first black woman from South Africa to hold a graduate degree. This great leader was not content to rest within the relative comfort of an academic career.
“She knew that her education had to be used in service to her people, who deserved nothing less than genuine freedom, including the freedom from ignorance, freedom from want, freedom from oppression, indignity and loss of self-respect,” Mbete said
She said her work formed part of the critical scholarship on gender, class and racial relations in South Africa.
“Thus her contribution as an intellectual to the opposition of various forms of injustice, with consequences for the 20th century political landscape cannot be undervalued,” Mbete said.
Department spokesman Mzukisi Solani said Mbete was delayed because the event she attended in Fort Beaufort started late and she had to attend another meeting in Alice before heading to Middledrift. — asandan@dispatch.co.za
Sihlwayi saves day after Mbete snub
The crowd had waited eagerly for Mbete’s arrival for more than five hours after the scheduled start to no avail.
Mbete was supposed to lead the march to the local police station at 11am and was scheduled to deliver the Charlotte Maxeke memorial lecture at 2pm but eventually only took to the podium at 6pm.
The crowd that was anxiously waiting for her showed their displeasure when it was announced she was running late after opening a creche in Fort Beaufort earlier yesterday.
When the march eventually started at 2.20pm, with Sihlwayi leading it in place of Mbete, more than 500 people joined in and sang pro-ANC and President Jacob Zuma songs.
The Daily Dispatch was reliably informed that Mbete opted for lunch at a fellow comrade’s house in Alice.
A group of elderly women inside the hall were overheard saying the wait was one of the reasons the party “was losing numbers in this area”.
“This shows us that our leaders do not care much about us on the ground,” an elderly Nozibele Mali said.
Among those who were kept waiting were MPs, MPLs, a choir of female inmates from correctional services and religious leaders.
Some department officials even confided to the Dispatch that they were confused as to whether this was an ANC event or the department’s.
When Mbete finally took the podium after 6pm to deliver the Charlotte Maxeke lecture, she said Maxeke was “an exceptional woman, whose very action was expressive of her extraordinary intellect, determination, courage, dedication to the highest ideals, principles and love of God”.
“She is known as the first black woman from South Africa to hold a graduate degree. This great leader was not content to rest within the relative comfort of an academic career.
“She knew that her education had to be used in service to her people, who deserved nothing less than genuine freedom, including the freedom from ignorance, freedom from want, freedom from oppression, indignity and loss of self-respect,” Mbete said
She said her work formed part of the critical scholarship on gender, class and racial relations in South Africa.
“Thus her contribution as an intellectual to the opposition of various forms of injustice, with consequences for the 20th century political landscape cannot be undervalued,” Mbete said.
Department spokesman Mzukisi Solani said Mbete was delayed because the event she attended in Fort Beaufort started late and she had to attend another meeting in Alice before heading to Middledrift. — asandan@dispatch.co.za
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