by PATRICK BOND
Two of South Africa’s greatest water warriors were not actually killed in conflict, though at the time of their deaths on June 22 and 23, both were furious with their traditional political party home, the ruling African National Congress (ANC).
For Kader Asmal (whom Nelson Mandela once proposed be ANC chairperson), the party’s proposed legislation to snuff state information, nicknamed the ‘Secrecy Bill’, warranted spirited condemnation, and the airwaves rang with his principled liberal critique up through his last week. The day after he died (age 76), the ANC authorized sufficient revision to the bill that he probably would have declared victory. His funeral and memorial were given exceptionally high-profile coverage in the state press, befitting his status as a senior human rights lawyer and party intellectual.
The other, Durban community activist Thulisile Christina Manqele (age 46), had a more profound critique of post-apartheid politics, and no one in authority was amongst 400 mourners at her July 2 community funeral. A former domestic worker, she suffered ill health and lost her job in 1999, at the time looking after seven children including three she informally adopted.
The two old enemies never actually met in person, and since the crucial Durban courtroom fight more than a decade ago, they probably never thought of one another. Yet their lives tell us a great deal about political status, social memory, and a battleground – Manqele’s water meter – on which South Africa has won its reputation as among the world’s most conflict-ridden societies.
Manqele, who regularly attended the monthly Harold Wolpe Lecture Series at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society, was an ordinary working-class woman, but in 1999-2000, she found herself at the centre of a ferocious struggle for water rights.
Asmal was, from 1994-99, the country’s water minister before becoming education minister (1999-2004), and by the late 2000s he chaired the Wolpe Trust. After I played a minor advisory role for him in 1997, Asmal wrote me an angry letter insisting I cease criticizing government for reneging on the promise in the 1994 ANC campaign platform, the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), for a universal free ‘lifeline’ water supply of 50 liters per person per day.
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