Violent crime, city complaints and foul language are the lot of this councillor

Genevieve Sherman is the councillor representing ward 69 which covers Johannesburg’s western suburbs, where many residents live in extreme poverty gang lands and drug dens. It’s a job few others want.

Her interactions with her community are intense, constant and volatile. While she helps where she can and speaks out loudly for fairness, she is also targeted by threats and abuse from those who feel she knows too much about the illicit dealings in her ward.

“Not everybody will like you or be happy with what you do, but for the most part I get on very well with my community. And the Joburg metro police department looks in on me. They do a drive by my house every night to check in and make sure I am OK,” said Sherman.

She's known as the councillor with one of the most challenging wards in the city, which includes Brixton, Coronationville, Hurst Hill, Melville (west side of Main Road), Melville Ext.3, Rossmore, Westbury Ext 3, Westdene and Slovo informal settlement..

“We have a lot of violence and murders here, and people cannot always get an ambulance or the police out and so they contact me out of frustration. They send me things like a photo of someone who has been shot, just to show the urgency,” Sherman told TimesLIVE.

She receives about 500 phone calls a day, many of them abusive, insulting and belittling as community members feel unheard and let down.

“I always answer on speakerphone. Once my son heard the person going off and wanted to go and smack them for talking to his mother like that. But though it is not our job to do service delivery, we have become the buffers between people and the council.”

Occasionally she is overwhelmed by the constant messages, pictures and calls — and the deep frustration “that is the general atmosphere across the country at the moment”.

When this happens she battles to sleep, and has occasionally taken to bathing in the middle of the night. “But it’s hard because then my husband wants to know what the trouble is and my family is upset with me waking the household by drawing a bath, so I try to just breathe and be pragmatic and remember that these people are marginalised and need me to be a voice.

“I got a call from a woman who had no power and been told by her boss to go to a coffee shop and work. She needed me to go and check on her paraplegic son left at home. She said, ‘Genevieve, I can’t afford to lose my job. But I can’t leave my child alone, I need you to check on him’. So I drove to City Power and fetched a truck myself to fix her electricity.”

As the overseer of 35,000 residents with no assistant and just a phone and a laptop, she says while many tears are shed, there are some good laughs too.

“One guy who was about to lose about R10,000 worth of meat because his freezer was off for so long just decided to have a big braai. He invited all the City Power technicians rather than just throw everything away. That was good,” she said.

Her biggest concern is that distressing situations are becoming normalised.

“I take the days as they come. I am not scared anymore. And that scares me.”

TimesLIVE