School drop-out takes over as council speaker

A year after councillor Zoliswa Matana passed her matric at the age of 55, she was given the critical responsibility of being Buffalo City Metro’s council speaker.

Duncan Village-born Matana was sworn in as speaker last month, a few days after the ANC decided to demote her predecessor Luleka Simon-Ndzele following the party’s Integrity Commission findings on her alleged involvement in the Nelson Mandela memorial scandal.

The former factory worker describes herself as someone who has been “shaped and refined” by the hardship she and her four siblings experienced while growing up at Somthunzi Street in Duncan Village.

It is here where Matana played skurum (a traditional ball game) and outshone her peers as the best centre player in her netball club while doing her primary schooling at Xabanisa Higher and later Welsh High School.

Hardships forced her to drop out of school in Standard 7 (Grade 9) after a relative offered her a job at Castolina textiles.

Matana cut her teeth in politics while working on the shop floor of the West Bank company where she was recruited to join the South African Allied Workers Union (Saawu). Some three years after joining the union, her bosses identified her as a “problem” and retrenched her. But, thanks to her commitment to the union, she was immediately offered a job as an administrator at Saawu’s local offices.

Ten years ago that she opted to throw away the high heels she wore to the office and registered a tavern which she operated from her other house in Kuni village near Phumlani in East London.

“It was not an easy decision to make, but I had to open a shebeen to make a living. Relying on a salary was not enough. I had to do it to be able to provide for my family.”

As Matana continued to involve herself in civic matters as an ANC branch organiser in Duncan Village, the ruling party listed her as one of its BCM proportional representative councillor candidates for the 2011 local elections.

“When I realised that I was on the candidates list I decided to choose between being a community leader and being a businessperson – that was when I opted to close shop. I no longer manage the business.”

In 2013 she was promoted to the mayoral executive committee and became the member responsible for development planning, an experience, she said, that helped her cope when she chaired her first meeting as a Council speaker four weeks ago.

Matana thanked her predecessor for making time to take her through her new role.

“Councillor Simon-Ndzele did not just move out of office. She took me through everything, highlighting the challenges of the role of a speaker and how to handle them. I am so grateful to her for having found time to do that.

“At the very first meeting as a speaker I was shocked. But at the back of my mind, I told myself that I am used to chairing meetings as an activist, the difference now is that this is a governmental one and has legislated guidelines on how to chair the meeting. That’s the difference. I tell myself that as much as this is a huge responsibility, I must focus.”

Matana, who will be chairing her third meeting as BCM speaker next week, also thanked her comrade, Nomantombazana Botha, former deputy minister of local government as well as arts and culture, for always reminding her to go back to school and further her studies.

“Were it not for Comrade Botha, I don’t think I would have had the courage to go back to school and do my matric,” she said.

Matana is currently doing a post-matric certificate in local government through Wits University.