ALI MPHAKI
IT WAS with profound sadness when comrades, friends and family learnt of the death of Makoloni Elizabeth Rankoko.
The former senior shop steward at the Health and Other Services Personnel Trade Union of SA (Hospersa) succumbed to an undisclosed illness at Chris Hani-Baragwanath Academic Hospital on July 25. She was 75. ordinated
Born in Port Elizabeth, Rankoko was the seventh child in a family of eight. She was the youngest daughter of the late Uniting Reformed Church in South Africa (URCSA) founder Rev Langalibalele Masoka and his wife Mashongwane Hilda Masoka.
The family moved from Port Elizabeth to Roodepoort West in the early 1950s and relocated to Tladi in Soweto in 1964.
Rankoko attended primary school in Tladi and went on to Sekano Ntoane Secondary School in Senaoane.
She obtained her junior certificate at Orlando West High School, popularly known as Matseke High, followed by a stint at a missionary nursing college at Dennilton in Mpumalanga.
She did not complete her nursing studies and returned to Joburg, where she worked for retail outlets such as the erstwhile Sales House, Greatermans and John Orr’s.
With her easy-going demeanour, she interacted well with customers wherever she worked, and it was not long before she was promoted to senior credit controller at Sales House.
In the mid-1960s she married Bridgeman Rankoko but they divorced a few years later, and she never remarried.
A trait that was evident in all her dealings with people was Rankoko’s ability to empathise.
This was probably as a result of having grown up in a highly religious family. She detested seeing people suffer, hence her desire to become a nurse, and she would do all she could to help those less fortunate than herself.
A lover of choral music and jazz, Rankoko was blessed with a beautiful alto voice and was a member of the URCSA women’s ( umanyano) group.
She was not content to merely attend church services on Sundays, but was an active member of the church, willing to take on whatever the elders asked of her.
And while at work, and perhaps because of her ability to listen to others, Rankoko found herself dealing with both staff and customer problems. Her impartiality when resolving disputes earned her respect from all sides.
“If she took sides, she took all the sides,” said one of her former colleagues.
With her experience of dispute resolution, it was not surprising that Rankoko became a shop steward when she joined Hospersa.
Her talents were quickly noticed and soon she was promoted to senior shop steward. This would be her final job before she retired in the late 1990s.
Rankoko never lost her sense of humour, even in her twilight years. Her family say she would leave them in stitches with her jokes.
They remember she liked joking that when she died, they must put red lipstick on her because “I want to be a sexy corpse”.
Rankoko, who is survived by her daughter Kedibone Yvonne Leteba, is due to be buried tomorrow after a funeral service at the URCSA in Tladi.
The funeral service is set to start at 10am and the cortege will proceed to the Doornkop cemetery, where Rankoko will be buried with her elder sister Mabel, as was her wish.