ANC promises are ringing hollow
Ruling party under fire for delivery deficit - Broken schools belie Mandela dream of 'a better life'
Nearly half of South Africa's 18 to 24 year olds — the first generation educated after apartheid — are not in the education system and have no jobs
First graders huddle to do sums on scraps of paper pressed against a cracked mud wall at Mwezeni Primary School in South Africa’s destitute Eastern Cape province.
The school may be located in Africa’s wealthiest nation, but there are no chairs, no desks and no work books.
The Eastern Cape, home to giants of the African National Congress like Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu who helped end apartheid and Thabo Mbeki, the nation’s second democratically elected president, is a glaring example of the ruling party’s failure to deliver its promise of a “better life for all”.
In Entshingeni village, not far away from where Mandela was raised, a mud hut with a dirt floor serves as a classroom to 79 first and second graders who sit on planks across rickety bench frames in front of a battered chalkboard.
“We are proud of Mr Mandela and Mr Mbeki. They came from this land and went all over the world. What will presidents overseas say if they see how we live?” said David Skwele from Mkanzini village, dressed in a tattered red T-shirt.
The ANC, in power now for 18 years, will hold a major policy conference this month acknowledging that “public services are uneven and often of poor quality; corruption is widespread; and South Africa remains a divided society”.
While thousands of schools wait each year for textbooks and many Eastern Cape children are forced to write on loose sheets, the ANC has produced copious reams of policy papers to be studied by about 3000 delegates at next week’s meeting.
The conference is expected to lead to another blizzard of strategy documents on what the ANC calls a “second transition”.
This aims to tackle what the party acknowledges as its greatest unfinished business: spreading wealth more widely and equitably in a nation whose levels of economic inequality are still among the highest in the world, a legacy of the political compromises needed to dismantle apartheid, which ended in 1994.
“Continuing with the status quo could lead South Africa into an irreversible downward spiral ... Our political transition was never only about freedom from political bondage,” an ANC discussion document prepared for the policy conference says. It refers to “old fissures of race, gender, class and geography”.
“GET RID OF THE ROT”
The week-long policy meeting is being held amid signs of acrimonious infighting among senior party figures ahead of another more critical conference at the end of the year which will elect the leadership and adopt strategies. President Jacob Zuma is widely expected to retain the party’s top job.
The ANC proposes government taking greater control of the economy, a massive infrastructure programme to create jobs and taxing mining firms more to help finance it all.
But a jaded public expect few effective measures from the conference to tackle corruption, mismanagement and cronyism that analysts see corroding governance and competitiveness in Africa’s largest economy.
Party insiders insist that the ANC is aware it needs to get its house in order. This means balancing pressure from an increasingly demanding but still marginalised majority against the political clout wielded by a post-apartheid economic elite whose interests are intertwined with the ANC government.
“At 100 years, now is as good a time as any to get rid of the rot festering in the party,” said one party official, who asked not to be identified while discussing internal criticism the party tries to keep behind closed doors.
A new book on South Africa by journalists Martin Plaut and Paul Holden, titled “Who rules South Africa? Pulling the strings in the battle for power”, describes the country’s political, economic and social state as “schizophrenic and disjointed”.
“A wealthy now largely multiracial middle and upper class exists in a first world bubble that is miles away from the penury from a bottom half that has seen few gains from the post apartheid period,” they wrote.
“MOUSE IN A CHEESE FACTORY”
Education has always been a priority for the ANC and the government spends nearly $1,400 (R11,000) a year on each student.
But at hundreds of Eastern Cape schools, it is difficult to see where any of the money has gone.
The classroom shack of the Mkanzini Junior School is so rickety that teachers fear that if they tack up charts on the rusted walls, the structure will collapse.
“On sunny days we boil in here. Look at the big holes, on rainy days we are soaked and on windy days, I am afraid the shack will fall on the kids,” said teacher Zoleka Nofonda, 40, who has two grades crammed in the room.
“They come because of the free meal we give them. Sometimes its the only thing they eat all day.”
The ANC, still revered for their role in bringing down apartheid, enjoys virtual one-party rule in South Africa.
In recent elections it has beaten the main opposition Democratic Alliance, largely seen as a party of white privilege in a nation that is 80% black, by more than 40 percentage points, although the opposition has made some gains.
Without fear of losing power, the ANC has deployed thousands of party cadres to run villages, towns and cities. But many of the movement’s loyalists have proved themselves more skilled at lining their pockets with state funds than at doing their jobs.
“It is like taking a mouse from the bush and making it run a cheese factory,” ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe told Reuters. He said the party was trying to rectify this.
LOST GENERATION
The delivery deficit is most acute in the Eastern Cape which receives the most funds of any province for welfare spending.
Spending here is pushed higher because the ANC government inherited sprawling “homelands”, which were set up by the apartheid regime to concentrate the black majority with almost no infrastructure in designated separate areas of the country.
With poverty so deep in Eastern Cape and a local electorate closely tied to the ANC, few have sought change through the ballot box so far.
But other parts of the country saw 372 protests against poor public services between January and May.
“There is very little sophistication from civil society and the electorate to hold leaders accountable,” said Derek Luyt from an Eastern Cape think tank, the Public Service and Accountability Monitor.
The central government more than a year ago declared the province’s education system an abject failure, and said it would intervene. But entrenched interests in the provincial ANC defied the mother body and kept control of education purse strings.
This meant little improvement for Mwezeni Primary, one of 400 schools made of mud and sticks.
More than 2,300 schools in the Eastern Cape have six teachers or less.
But according to government statistics, the Eastern Cape overspends on teachers by up to $120 million (R960 million) a year, and civil society activists suspect the money is going to corrupt officials instead of personnel in classrooms.
“Eastern Cape has a long history of inequality and poor bureaucracy inherited from the former homelands. It’s a province using old systems, where corruption and mismanagement thrives,” said Yoliswa Dwane from the Equal Education advocacy group.
Nearly half of South Africa’s 18 to 24 year olds — the first generation educated after apartheid — are not in the education system and have no jobs, according to government data.
This “lost” generation is seen as a weakness in Africa’s largest economy which is trying to grow its tax base as it funds increased social spending.
‘GHOST’ WORKERS, REAL SHORTAGES
As in education, corruption is also seen eating away at resources needed to boost the health sector. Horror stories of the Eastern Cape’s health woes have become a staple of media.
In May, an elite body set up to investigate corruption in the provincial government uncovered suspected graft amounting to $24 million (R190 million).
In 2011, the provincial health department said nearly $100 million (R800m) had “vanished” from January 2009 to June 2010 with about $54 million (R430m) going to so-called ‘ghost staff’ who drew a paycheck and did no work, the regional Daily Dispatch reported.
Heading towards the sea on a rugged track lies Madwaleni Hospital, built by missionaries in the 1960s and staffed by foreigners because even lucrative stipends offered by the government have not proved enough to attract South African doctors.
“We are always experiencing a shortage of something. Sometimes it is medicine, sometimes it is gloves but our worst is a shortage of doctors and nurses,” said a foreign doctor who did not want to be identified while discussing the hospital’s shortcomings.
Human Rights Watch said in a 2011 survey that Eastern Cape had some of the worst health indicators in South Africa, including high infant, child, and maternal mortality rates.
Nofinish Nqata, 63, lives in a traditional white-washed Xhosa hut in Ngqamakhwe village in Butterworth, on land allocated to her by the local chief.
The village has no electricity or telephones. Families use pit latrines and walk long distances to collect water.
“The water we drink we share with pigs, cows and donkeys. Some people use the river banks as their toilets and when it rains it washes into the water supply.”
Once a die-hard ANC loyalist, Nqata has taken the bold step of joining the Democratic Alliance.
“It hurts so much because the old men Sisulu and (former ANC president Oliver) Tambo are no longer alive and the ones who took over the baton don’t share the vision the stalwarts who fought for democracy had. They care about themselves and their pockets, not us.”
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somaartakeit
of course they are hollow instead they are going to cause many to lose their jobs if they continue to not pay up the bill for the services they consumed, as today there is an article about them not paying the bills, do they not realise that these employers offering services to them have employees salaries to pay? anc is a job creation deleter. They always act contrary to what they claim to stand for, lets start with aids, their president sleeps around without using condom putting his wives at huge risk of being infected with hiv (this is assuming he has not already infected them), the anc claims they will create jobs for the unemployed, then they consume services and not pay for services, how do they expect these employers to keep those employees on the payroll if there is no income? anc you are a bunch of shameless thieves.Report Abuse
The-Rothschilds
I guess the truth of the matter is, things would of been better off if us Europeans had never invaded here in the first place.................................but im sure the day will come where they (black Africans) will by force chase us all to OR Tambo international.Thank god i did the right thing, and sent most of my money to profitable assets in the US. But nothing beats the beauty of this country, so i shall remain until the bitter end!
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Papage
Mandela & Mbeki now look stupid? Zuma is busy re-building Nkantla, his home town, using tax payers monies, that is his priority, fix my home, my family, the rest later.Report Abuse
BraSteve
Its no use telling us that the government spends R11000 per kid at school. After all R10 999.99 of that goes to the salaries of officials, tenders (and they don't even distribute the book), administration fees, and the rest is blatantly stolen.Report Abuse
WarrenG
Supporters of the ANC. Read and understand.The ANC will never tell you the truth. They're liars.
They'll continue to rip you off till the day you die...
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KgoshiKgolo
But the country will continue going down as long as illiterate people keep voting ANC = bunch of thieves! We shall only progress the day the ANC dies, we need the ANC (looters) to be finished in order to fix our country. The voters deserve this poverty because they continue voting incompetent and corrupt peole into offices!Report Abuse
Bebesocs
I am so pleased and thankful to the person who explained the situation in the Eastern Cape especially to the former Transkei region, this situation of this region being neglected by ANC dates back when civil servants of Transkei government under leadership of general Bantubonke Holomisa voted his party(UDM) and unfortunately they influenced our people in the rural areas who do not know how to vote even today majority of people do not know how to vote, then ANC did not take it well and they punished us by not delivering the services hence we are in this poverty in this region. Our ANC leaders that is Mr Mandela, Mr Mbeki, Mr Tambo, Mr Sisulu all come from this region turned their backs on us they never helped at all hence you find some of the schools in their regions falling, it is sad, its not only education department that has failed look at the department of health people are dying who cares NOBODY. The roads and clinics that are there some built after 1976 but before 1992. What did ANC do to this region after 18 years nothing, there is not even a reliable ambulance service that can reach our people in areas like Tyelebana, We are in a mess.Report Abuse
MicaParis
All is not lost we can still reclaim back the lost pride of the ANC. The solution is simple, we must change the way leadership positions are being contested in our country, the constitution must be amended to set a certain standard for a leader to be voted as a political head of a country, province and a municipality. The strong pillars must be education as a high priority , moral capability, individual brilliance, non corrupt cadre with clean crime free history and a very good reputation that any body can trust and fall in love with. At branch level comrades should be elected by the majority of the inhabitants of that section and at national level just like the way we vote for a political party in the country to lead us comrades should be elected in that way by ballot to be ministers as they come from academic institutions, private sector , Civil Society NGO's and within the ranks of the ANC and Parliament. As for the President the American, US model to elect the president must be followed were candidates must be elected by all the people of South Africa in a secrete ballot out of at list ten delegates. If we follow this guidelines surely we will never have leaders like Jacob Zuma, Richard Mdluli, Beki Cele and Toni Yenkeni not forgetting Julius Malema as he is still a leader of the ANC but this time underground!Report Abuse
CheeseBoy
Think about this FACT.There is not ONE liberation movement in the world that has successfully governed. ALL liberation movements have at some point turned against their own people in one way or another.
Instead of improving the lives of the man on the street. people have suffered worse under the rule of liberation movements.
The ANC was a liberation movement.
go figure
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KHABZO
Q U O T E: "Nearly half of South Africa's 18 to 24 year olds — the first generation educated after apartheid — are not in the education system and have no jobs."What does this mean? ~ ".... are not in the education system and have no jobs."
Does this mean, '18 to 24 year olds' DO NOT ATTEND SCHOOL?
OR
Does this mean, '18 to 24 year olds' DO NOT TEACH?
Should '18 to 24 year olds' who 'are in the education system' ALSO have jobs?
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