Klina Mhlali campaign in Alex goes back to the drawing board

The managing board of the We Love Alexandra Community Makeover Project has resolved to go back to the drawing board to broaden the reach and participation in the Klina Mhlali clean-up campaign of the township.

This was announced by Brenda Sibiya, the head of the Klina Mhlali campaign, which falls under her portfolio in the Clean-up and Beautification Committee. She told Alex News the board had come to the realisation that for the clean-up campaign to be the success they desire, particularly around the Pan Africa Square precinct, every business and all the hawkers trading there, including the Pan Africa Shopping Centre itself and other stakeholders, had to all come to the party.

“We want to broaden the scope of involvement in the clean-up campaign to also draw in stakeholders such as the taxi industry, faith-based organisations such as churches, your healers, your civic organisations, and the buy-in from the various political parties and community organisations like your NGOs and others,” Sibiya said.

She said this was glaring during the recent inaugural Klina Mhlali clean-up of Alexandra, which had been earmarked to become a monthly affair that would happen every second Saturday of the month.

The campaign got off to a slow start with a handful of community members in attendance and conspicuous in their absence were all eight councillors that have a stake in the township and are considered as the first citizens of the wards. The councillors included the six wards of the ANC that are deep in the township and the other two on the peripheries that are held by the DA.

Both Sibiya and the CEO of South Africa Day Dr Bheki Shongwe said they had reached out to the councillors through their chief whip, Adolph Marema, and a meeting with all of them was arranged but only three turned up and they too had to leave hastily for pressing business in the city.

Ward 105 councillor Tefo Raphadu, who was recently elected as zonal chair of the ANC Zone 13, which includes Alexandra and other surrounding areas, bemoaned what he called last-minute involvement. “The organisers should have brought us in right from the conceptualisation of the clean-up project and we would have assisted them to drum up and rally support from the community.”

Sibiya countered and said her vice president of the makeover project, Bonisile Kunene, had copied her in on all her correspondence with stakeholders, including the councillors. “But that’s water under the bridge and quarrelling over what was not done will not help us move the project forward and, hence, we have taken a deliberate decision to restart the process all over again.”