In 1955 his late father was the first black taxi owner in Kwa-Guqa with his Chevrolet Biscayne for the community of less than 50 000.
One taxi here at Kwa-Guqa was enough to ferry the rich who could afford the exorbitant 50c to go to town when most walked and saved the 50c for our education. Then the first Indian, Monica joined this lucrative business to drive people around and get paid.
Thirty years later Paul Mahlangu became the first black business enterprise in Kwa-Guqa licensed to open a dry-cleaning plant under very gruesome government machinery and mining restrictions and regulations together with a Chinese dry cleaning plant. This happened 30 years after the first black businessman in South Africa licensed to open a dry cleaning plant in Atteridgeville, Pretoria Rev Ishmail Moroe (1952).
Growing under mothers who rose in the early hours of the day to go and do domestic laundry washing by hand so as to get all of us to school with the meager pay collected from three or more households who had their ‘washing’ done by our mothers in their overalls. No wonder some of our old grannies are nursing fingers attacked by arthritis for the sake of today’s generation.
He became an instrument of change in this sector of economic and social development of Kwa-Guqa. Conspicuously absent from organized business fraternal, his soft voice represented the quiet and humble residents who saw business as a necessary holistic lifelong service to the community. Not enriching and filling up one’s pockets with money from those who lived from hand to mouth.
With his departure, who will be the first to rid eMalahleni of its mushrooming decorative potholes for economic growth and social stability?
