All change at the town hall.

When apartheid ended in South Africa, thousands of racially segregated communities, with separate local governments, merged. In many towns, the transition has been painful, with newly elected black councillors pressing for the dismissal of white (appointed) officials, and white employees unwilling to work for black people.

Snowy Mohlala has operated the switchboard at her local town hall for the last 12 years. In 1997, after South Africa's first nonracial local government elections, the black town council of Kwa-Thema, where she worked, merged with the white town council of Springs. Mohlala, who is also Deputy Chairperson of the Springs branch of the African National Congress (ANC), quickly noticed that things were not going as they should.

`It was not so easy for some of the old officials and staff to accept change,' she says. `Some resigned because of uncertainty about their jobs and fears that their pension money would be used by the new government to make up shortages. And some of the new councillors had promised jobs to people who had voted for them but were not qualified. I was worried that we were going to lose the people who had experience and qualifications, and that the entire community would suffer.'

Mohlala, who fought her way back from a life on the streets as a drug addict in her teens, does not believe in standing back when she sees something going wrong. And she is not short of courage. In 1978 she was shot twice in the stomach by a white policeman during a funeral vigil. Because the police were looking for her, her ANC comrades had to smuggle her out of the hospital while she was still dependent on drips.

Faced with the divisions on the council, which employs over 4,000 people, she came up with the idea of taking the main protagonists away on a retreat. The Chairman of the Council's Executive was sceptical. `He thought that I wanted to sell the councillors out to the whites,' she says. `But in the end he agreed, if I organized it.'

It was equally difficult to persuade all the different groups to take part. But eventually, on 25 August last year, 11 ANC councillors, 15 heads of department (most of whom were white), and 15 trade union officials piled into a bus to travel to the retreat venue.

On the bus, Mohlala had to tell people to move around so that they were sitting with someone from a different group. When they arrived, she was told that some people were carrying guns. She went around asking people to give her their guns--and ended up with 11.

When Mohlala read out the day's agenda she was so nervous that her hands were shaking. `Then I said that everyone must say if anyone had done anything that had offended them. The officials said that the councillors interfered in their jobs; the councillors said that the officials didn't listen to them and talked about them in their meetings.

`After that we had to see how to resolve matters. I said, "Nobody's going to lose any job or be judged. Here is the mess in front of us. We must put it aside and start afresh." We were quiet for a while, and someone suggested we should hold hands and pray. I started to laugh, because some of the ANC comrades don't believe in praying, but we did it. And then we started working out how to work together.'

The retreat has made a `vast difference' to Springs/Kwa-Thema, says Mohlala. Most of the white officials have stayed on, in contrast to other towns where many have left.

She puts her determination down to her upbringing by a father whose life had been deeply affected by his connection with MRA. She has had a tough life, she says. `But my Dad used to say, "All things are possible if you only believe."'