Meet the DA’s iron lady aiming to snatch Diepsloot from ANC
DIEPSLOOT – DA fields a high-community profile candidate in Diepsloot.
Refilwe Mathebula, a DA councillor in Diepsloot, is a regular feature in the Fourways Review.
Her face is occasionally beamed across this paper’s pages for the correct reasons. The single mother of two boys is forever complaining about poor service delivery in Diepsloot.
So who is she anyway? Who is Mathebula? Is she just a Proportional Representative Councillor of the opposition party in Diepsloot? No! She refers to herself as the daughter of the Diepsloot community.
Her family was moved to Diepsloot during the apartheid era, and Mathebula grew up in Riversand. She attended Riversand Primary School before moving to kwaNdebele for her secondary education.
Read: Ward 94 councillor reflects on years served
The diminutive Mathebula is currently studying towards a diploma in governance management at the University of Johannesburg. “I am grooming myself for the enormous task of serving in the local government,” she said.
The councillor is currently living with her parents, siblings and her children in Ext 2 of Diepsloot. Her excitement over community work manifests in her facial expressions as she speaks about her daily work of helping people in less-privileged situations.
She is away from home most of the time. If she is not in council meetings, she will be attending to people’s problems, or at the University of Johannesburg, learning.
Her teenage boys also want a piece of her time but Mathebula is, however, lucky to have a supportive family that takes care of her children as she runs around performing her duties.
“When I started community work, I was merely volunteering without expecting anything from anyone. I never dreamt of being a councillor, I just enjoy putting smiles on people’s faces. The DA noticed the kind of work I was doing in the community and invited me to serve as their PR councillor in the area,” she said Mathebula said she takes Diepsloot as her home and therefore feels compelled to uplift her community by being engaged in community projects.
Read: Ward 93 councillor shares her hopes for 2016
She said she joined the DA after being frustrated by the poor quality of leaders that the ANC was deploying to serve the communities. “I was born in an ANC family but broke ranks with the ruling party after realising that things were not being done properly.
“The wrong people are always being chosen to lead the party which, in the end, fails voters.”
Mathebula, who is scheduled to lock horns with the ANC’s Rodgers Makhubele on 3 August, has vowed to snatch Ward 95 from the ANC.
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