From being a messenger to being awarded a doctorate for a study in Buffalo City corruption has been an extraordinary achievement of former politician Mike Basopu.
It was his thesis into corruption in local government, with a specific focus on Buffalo City Metro, that earned Basopu a PhD in public administration, something he never imagined 30 years ago.
Basopu went through a tumultuous political career – from being a union activist to an ANC member of the Bhisho legislature to joining the Congress of the People (COPE).
But throughout the ups and downs of his political life, he took advantage of opportunities and empowered himself through education sponsored by state funds.
Today, not only has he earned a doctorate but he works for the Amathole district municipality as an intergovernmental relations and international relations manager.
Born in Kei Mouth outside Bhisho 57 years ago to Milton and Novukile Basopu – neither of whom had formal education – Basopu said he has always been passionate about education, even after quitting school in Standard 9 (now Grade 11) to become a mineworker in the City of Gold in 1980.
He did not last long as a mineworker and returned to the Eastern Cape to finish his matric at Mabobothi High School in Centane.
At Frere Hospital, where he was a laboratory messenger, he was exposed to union politics and joined the then South African Workers’ Union (Sawu).
In 1986 he was jailed for a year by the apartheid government.
This propelled him into mainstream politics, which eventually saw him becoming an ANC MPL at the dawn of democracy.
As an MPL with just matric when he started out, he served as chairman of the standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) and other portfolio committees – and in his spare time continued studying, graduating with an honour’s degree in 2005 and master’s degree in 2011.
“In 1994 there were funds set aside for capacity building to say we cannot lead people without being capacitated. I registered for a public management course as a start and got my first diploma qualification in 2000,” said Basopu.
In 2012 he registered with the University of Fort Hare for a PhD and chose to do a “critical assessment of corruption in municipalities and its impact on service delivery” using BCM as a case study.
His background of hardships, political activism and public service inspired him to choose corruption as a topic of research.
“It was during my time in politics that I was exposed to glaring corruption in government. “In fact I also researched corruption for my master’s degree focusing on the department of education in the Eastern Cape, which gets the biggest slice from the provincial fiscus and had the highest number of corruption cases,” he said.
He said he chose BCM because municipal managers never completed their employment contracts.
This, he said, was as a result of “manipulation by public representatives in the municipality”.
At the centre of his findings was that cadre deployment by the ruling party in its current form was to blame for corruption as it was open to abuse by greedy politicians.