A story of humble beginnings, a rise to prominence and back to the beginning again, is how former Amathole District Municipality (ADM) mayor Nomasikizi Konza sums up her life story.
Konza made headlines in May 2016 when she was arrested by the Hawks, together with a group of others, for the alleged fraud involving more than R6m which was allegedly wrongly channeled from her municipality coffers for, among others, a beauty pageant.
Later she was removed from her post as mayor, while her trial is still ongoing at the East London regional court, with her next court appearance November 1.
In a tell-all book about her life in politics, and her fall from grace, Konza shares the experience of now being a back bencher in a council she once led.
Her 107-page book, published by Lesedi Hot Books, is titled The Silent Voice, Footprints of Life.
The 14-chapter book contains snippets of the journey that has brought her from a farm girl to a school teacher and eventually an executive mayor of one of the biggest regions in the Eastern Cape, to ultimately becoming an ordinary councillor.
The book offers self introspection as she shares from the scriptures that have sustained her over the period of two years in the wake of her 2016 arrest removal from the mayoral office...