South Africans blame leaders for corruption

Millions for education disappeared

MIDDELPLAAS, South Africa — The little girl hated going to the bathroom at school. The pit toilets were so dark, dirty and crumbling.

Even with the gentle pressure of Ziyanda Nkosi’s tiny frame, the floor caved in. Ziyanda, 6, flailed wildly, clinging to the edges of the hole, frantically trying to keep herself from falling in and drowning in the fetid pool below. She held on long enough for an older boy to run in and save her

Hundreds of parents, enraged that their warnings about the dilapidated school had been ignored for years, burst into protest a couple of days later, upending their quiet rural town for two weeks last August. They burned tires, blocked roads and demanded justice from the provincial government led by David Mabuza, a former math teacher who had become one of the most powerful figures in the African National Congress.

One of the party’s historic promises had been to provide a good education for black people, who had been deliberately denied the opportunity under apartheid. But under the ANC, the education system has been in shambles, so gutted by corruption that even party officials are dismayed at how little students are learning, in schools so decrepit that children have plunged to their deaths in pit toilets.

The rage in Ziyanda’s town grew so intense that protesters hurled stones at a local ANC leader, who narrowly escaped by whipping out his handgun and shooting randomly into the crowd, wounding two children.

Mabuza, who declined to be interviewed, never came to the school or met with the parents — and for good reason, local officials contend. The dangerous conditions were a clear reflection of his control over the province, where millions of dollars for education have disappeared into a vortex of suspi- cious spending, shoddy public construction and brazen corruption to fuel his political ambitions, according to government records and officials in his party.

But the uprising and allegations against Mabuza did not crimp his political rise. Only a few months later, Mabuza scored his biggest triumph by far. He was picked to become second-in-command of the entire ANC, launching him into an even more prominent post — South Africa’s deputy president, second only to the nation’s leader.

“He didn’t become what he is now because of his political capability,” said Fish Mahlalela, a senior ANC figure in the province and a national lawmaker.

“No, no, it was out of money and the manipulation,” he added. “Nothing else.”

Now, critics contend, Mabuza’s role as the country’s second-most powerful politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of the new government and its assertions that the ANC is turning the page on corruption.

Fish Mahlalela, a senior African National Congress figure and a national lawmaker, talks outside the house he grew up in in Mbuzini, South Africa.