OBED BAPELA
Well the idea as earlier said was an idea which we saw developing in the Eastern Cape and fortunately at that time I was working for Media and Resource Centre and one used to travel a lot to the Eastern Cape to go and trade organisations on media skills and pamphleteering and so forth so one was exposed you know street committees you know operate and function and the order in which they brought into the community and the respect of their families and their committee as a whole that it brought.  So we then started sharing the idea with other comrades in Alexandra about you know having to start in Alexandra establishing street committees so that people can take their own destiny into their own hands and then show that they are able then to live as human beings and as a community sharing and then the sorrows and sharing the joy you know together as a community. So the discussion started around November/December for such an idea of the street committees and then a group of us then was mandated to begin discussions with the Alexandra Civic Association, which was led by Mr Mike Bia to say why don't you build a strong organisation, a mass based organisation and this is the format and thus how we need to do it where you move from area to area, street to street, yard to yard and then begin to establish these committees.  Explain to the people first and then thereafter the people will appoint their own committees and so forth.  And a structure was then you know put together as to how should the structure look like and
ALEXANDRA HEARING TRC/GAUTENG
15 BAPELA
how many members should be serving in a committee.  And those discussions did not bear any fruits unfortunately and then when we realised that the Alexandra Civic Association did not want really to adopt that structure and to start building its organisation on it.  We then approached Mr Moses Mayegiso who was a leading trade unionist known within the country, a member of Numsa and then to say can you be the leader of this new organisation.  That will then be structured along the street committees and so forth.  And after some series of discussion by those comrades who were mandated, unfortunately I was not part of them because at that time the police were looking for me for a trial in Cradock so I had to be very careful.  I used to come in during the night in Alexandra and speak to the comrades and leave and they would do the rest of the work and then go on hiding.  And so they managed therefore to convince comrade Moses Mayegiso and he accepted and then a series of meetings between the students organisation, the Alexandra Youth Congress at that time started with Moses and the others to meet with the people in their yards, called committee meetings where they will explain the structure and then people would go back, discuss and then begin to establish democratically those structures and then elected people democratically to serve them.  And then this sort of really spread throughout the township and then it was at that time when the people were moving from street to street when the incident at the funeral of Michael Durari and Alexandra was engulfed into a six days war.