SATURDAY INTERVIEW

but we all got the same portions. That was about sharing and being considerate, survival was interdependent, we did everything together,” she said.

We were sitting in a buzzing restaurant in the Cape Town CBD when a man sitting at a table across from ours came over to shake Khoza’s hand and commend her for her fighting spirit.

She smiled graciously as she welcomed the appreciation with warmth.

Though her family was not very political, her grandmother conscientised her from an early age to a point where she became an activist at 12, before leaving home at 13.

Khoza at the time was also an entrepreneur, selling fried fish and popcorn at school and to people in the neighbourhood. Her political turning point came after a friend told her of a place in the city where she could get her fish cheaper.

“When I went into the city, I saw these white kids who were not barefoot like me. I was walking barefoot and they were riding bicycles. They had all these nice houses and suddenly I saw the children were swimming in a sparkling blue pool and here I was swimming in the river, the dirty water.”

In search of a balance between the “injustices” she believed were enacted upon black people, Khoza became involved in the youth movement.

“I was very inquisitive; then I joined a youth movement called DCO Matiwane before I became part of the Edendale Youth. I was 12 at the time and that is when I came across the Freedom Charter, which was the first political document which made sense to me. It began to sensitise me that actually I was not getting the same education as those people, It was beginning to talk about racism and that we needed to have a non-racial society. “That is how I became

PICTURE: REUTERS ANC MP Makhosi Khoza says she was insulted when she ordered not to vote against Zuma.