Linda Twala in front of his wall of merit certificates
IN 1986, at the height of the anti-apartheid struggle, the security
police threw hand grenades into Alexandra philanthropist Linda Twala's
house in 17th Street, and to his horror, he realised that his three
teenage daughters were in the house at the time.
He had bought groceries for his mother and loaded them into his
bakkie and set out for her house. While there he received a phone call
to say his house was under attack and he should go into hiding. He
couldn't do this - he had to ascertain that his daughters were safe.
"The house was up in flames, the cars were up in flames. The
police had instructed the fire brigade not to put out the fire," he
says. There was R12 000 in the house - this was lost. The dog came
running out when the police appeared - it was shot dead. To his relief
he found that his daughters were safe - they had dashed from the house
into the dog's asbestos kennel and had been rescued by neighbours.
Twala had been campaign organiser of the Save Alex Campaign
in 1979 (Alexandra was established in 1912 and had been threatened with
demolition many times) and was still monitored in the 1980s by the
security police. Several prominent Alexandrans had had their houses
bombed.
"After the bombing I had nothing to wear. Old ladies brought me shirts," he recalls.
Philanthropist and businessman
Those old ladies meant a lot to Twala, and still do - he's spent his life paying them back and caring for them.
Twala, 59 and well-built with grey flecks at his beard, started his
career as Alexandra philanthropist and businessman in the late 1960s by
being concerned about old women who died in the township and had no
relatives to bury them. He was busy preparing several tombstones for
these women when his house was burnt to the ground.
"My house was bombed on Tuesday and we placed the tombstones on
their graves on Saturday," he says. Today he owns a funeral company,
the Twala Ama Afrika Funeral Directors, and a refuse removal company,
Alex Refuse Removals.
Twala is well-known in the township, and certainly
well-recognised for his many contributions to the community. And this
community is severely impoverished, with an unemployment rate believed
to be as high as 60 percent, with most people living in slum
conditions, in one-roomed, tin shacks in extremely overcrowded
conditions. Some 170 000 (2001 Census: 166 968) people live in this
ghetto, in an area of approximately one square mile.
For our interview I park at the Alexandra Clinic where he waits
for me. I get into his Chrysler bus and he takes me on a tour of the
township. The conversation is frequently interrupted by him answering
his cellphone.
He is the grandson of the first residents of Alexandra, Eva and Hey
Nxele Mbanjwa, who were originally from KwaZulu-Natal. Hey was the cook
of S Papenfus, a wealthy farmer who brought Eva and Hey with him when
he moved to the Transvaal. He owned several farms around present-day
Alexandra, one of which, Zandfontein, eventually became the township.
The Mbanjwas built a mud hut on Zandfontein, and it acted as a
donkey-refreshment station for carts carrying Papenfus' milk from his
farm in Midrand to Johannesburg.
The Mbanjwas brought their five-year-old daughter Annie with
them when they moved. Annie married Phumuza Twala and they had 10
children. Phumuza was a thatcher and thatched roofs in the white
suburbs of Johannesburg. He died in 1971.
Annie lived to see her children grow to adulthood, and more -
she buried several of them too. She died in February this year, at the
age of 99, and as Alex's most famous resident, her funeral was attended
by thousands of people.
Two principles
Linda Twala takes his inspiration from his generous-spirited
mother, who brought up her children with two guiding principles:
discipline, and the ability, if surprised by a stranger at the door, to
give your plate of dinner to that person without hesitation.
Twala learnt his lessons well. He runs the Phuthaditshaba Care
of the Aged Project, started by his mother as a care centre back in the
1960s. It was this building that was bombed by the police in the 1980s,
and was rebuilt as the new Phuthaditshaba.
Downstairs mostly women, grey-haired and frail-looking, sit in a row
patiently waiting for a meal - some 200 are fed each day. Upstairs, a
row of young women, some with toddlers on their laps, sit waiting for
medical attention in the satellite clinic. And in a side room, a job
creation project sees a group of half a dozen people sitting around a
table making plastic wreaths.
And at the end of the year, he holds a Christmas party for the
oldies, when over 2 000 people enjoy a special dinner and
entertainment.
The project has three sub-communities within it: the elephants
or oldies, the lions or middle age folk, and the leopards or
youngsters. The lions and leopards do home visits to those oldies who
are bedridden, taking them meals. Twala is keen to set up a
meals-on-wheels business and is looking at sponsorship for a vehicle.
The Jewish charity organisation, Tikkun, works with Twala. Tikkun has a
shack renewal scheme and has so far repaired 160 shacks in the
township. Their emergency reaction unit supplies blankets and food when
disasters like shack fires occur. They have built a kitchen at
Phuthaditshaba.
Galit Cohen of Tikkun describes Twala: "He is the unofficial
king of Alex. When you walk the streets with him you feel like royalty
- everyone greets him and knows him. People are loyal to him. You can
trust everything he says."
Twala continues to play a role in burying destitute people. His
funeral directors company takes time out to organise and sponsor
funerals for these people.
Housing
Twala has made a contribution to the housing crisis in Alex. An
initiative called Habitat for Humanity has built single and
double-storey homes, some already unrecognisable, he says, because they
have been extended.
Twala's Habitat for Humanity houses
Twala says his houses are solidly constructed. "I made two trips to the US to learn about building houses," he says.
After taking a tour of Alex with Twala, we end up in a room at
Phuthaditshaba, its one wall covered with photographs and framed awards
he's received. He says, pointing to one of them: "This is my favourite,
the Blue Sea Award for Caring, 1994."
Other memorable awards are: Community Builder of the Year, 1991, and the Community Builder of the Decade, 2001.
Photographs on the wall include Twala posing with Nelson Mandela, US
senator Edward Kennedy and Queen Elizabeth. Also on the wall is a poem,
entitled "Who is that man?" especially written for him by the Alexandra
Graduate Society.
At one time Twala was a city councillor but found that he
couldn't spend as much time among the people of Alexandra. He gave it
up.
His strives to improve living conditions for Alexandrans. "The
government needs to give away RDP houses instead of charging people for
them," he says. "And people who are selling vetcakes on the pavement
should be given flats. They can't supply the banks with credit
guarantees but they have viable businesses."
He'd like to see shops with overhead flats built in Selborne Street in Alex, for young people.
He's concerned that the two Alex cemeteries are now full, and
people are now forced to go to Fourways, Midrand or Westpark to bury
their dead, all expensive trips for people living on the breadline.
"We want land to the south of Alexandra, in which to create a
new cemetery," he says. "Sometimes a body lies in the mortuary for
three months waiting to be buried."
He also wants the township to expand to the east, into Linbro Park, "It's farmland at the moment."
Special project
Twala speaks passionately of another project he dreams of. A
14-year-old girl lives with her family in a very closely-packed shack
area. We walk through the shacks to her locked shack but she's away at
school in Germiston. The haphazard shackland has corridors of just
enough room to squeeze through, some flowing with water and garbage.
The girl is disabled and he says: "You can't move a wheelchair through
these alleyways."
He wants to get a piece of land nearby on which a house for her
and her family can be built. He's got the Gauteng government's buy-in,
but these things move slowly.
Twala is devoted to his community. He was born in Alex and
would never think of living elsewhere. "Alex is a wonderful place, I
wouldn't live anywhere else," he says.
As he drives around Alex, he waves frequently to people on the
street, stopping at one point and handing out new white towels to
people on the street. Further on he turns a corner and stops to greet
more people. He has a conversation with them in Zulu.
I ask him what transpired.
"These people tell me that there're several old folk nearby in
need to food - can I provide them with meals?" He tells them he'll see
what he can do. He adds: "Helping the needy is a calling."
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