Mosiuoa “Terror” Lekota has visited Mitchells Plain for the first time in three decades - and enjoyed a plate of lekker akhni while jiving in the streets, garnering votes for his party for the upcoming local elections on August 3.
Lekota, the founder and president of the Congress of the People (COPE), had a door-to-door campaign innie Plain, visiting the crime-riddled Town Centre Mall, Tafelsig and Eastridge areas.
He was accompanied by Cope’s Mitchells Plain ward councillor candidates, crime fighter Jasmine Harris, Cheryl Philander and Faiza Jacobs.
He strolled though Town Centre while Jasmine pointed out drug dealing and prostitution hot spots.
Lekota told the Daily Voice he last visited Mitchells Plain in August 1983, during the dark days of Apartheid, when the United Democratic Front had just been launched.
“I was here in 1983 with the UDF,” he explains. “We came to make political preparations here, and now I am back.”
Like the UDF then, Cope believes political power lies in giving the ordinary man on the street a voice in their decisions.
“When you have a budget, you govern it with the people and ask if they agree with it. You give them proper toilets and water and then you can deal with the other social issues.”
Jasmine says there was only one way to welcome back the former apartheid fighter - by cooking a 20 litre pot of akhni for Lekota and his mense.
Cope's Jasmine Harris and Lekota share a meal.
Jasmine, a well-known crime fighter who thinks nothing of tackling drug dealers and gangsters in the Plain, says she decided to turn to politics as this would give her a bigger platform to fight evil elements in her community.
The former ANC member says she joined COPE, who “recognised my work in the community”, and named her as candidate for Ward 79.
“I took the president to the Town Centre where drug dealing and prostitution is alive,” she says.
“I told him girls as young as nine years old are being used for prostitution.”
Lekota enjoyed a plate of Jasmine’s delicious chicken akhni at her home in Eastridge, before leaving to do more campaigning in Khayelitsha.