This extraordinary story portrays the historical roots of the service delivery revolts that have swept South Africa in recent years. Freedom never rests centres around an engaging and tragic couple: unemployed ex-shop steward revolutionary Monwabisi Radebe and his wife, Constantia, a former nursery school aide turned local councillor in the fictional Eastern Cape township of Sivuyile. Their relationship is a metaphor for the new democratic order. As the council implements an American-financed project of prepaid meters, water cut-offs are visited upon dozens of households in Sivuyile. The idealistic Monwabisi faces the most difficult of choices: to remain loyal to a loving wife and mother of his children who now represents an increasingly discredited council or take to the streets with disenchanted residents. Avoiding simplistic analyses and triumphant rhetoric, Freedom Never Rests lays bare the political and personal intricacies of community struggles.
On a grand political canvas artfully and sometimes humorously drawn, Monwabisi and a host of other intriguing and compelling characters pull us into the moral and economic dilemmas of street level organization and force us to confront the complexity of democracy in our country.