Ramaphosa needs to fulfil promises to the forgotten former homelands
The late Xhosa king Zwelonke Sigcawu once chastised President Cyril Ramaphosa for travelling by helicopter to visit his Nqadu palace instead of using a car. Had Ramaphosa travelled by car, Sigcawu argued, the president would have witnessed the deplorable state of roads that led to his palace, situated in Gatyana (Willowvale) in the former Transkei, now part of the Eastern Cape.
In January 2018, Ramaphosa led a delegation of the ANC’s top six leaders to pay a courtesy visit to the king after a bruising elective conference in December 2017, where Ramaphosa emerged victorious over his leadership rival, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.
Throughout the kingdom, roads have not been modernised since the British ruled over the area in the 1800s and early 1900s. The expansive network of gravel roads has not been upgraded into tarred roads and to this day many rivers are still crossed using ox-wagon bridges left behind by the British.
On the day Ramaphosa visited the Xhosa king, he was also questioned why traditional chiefs were paid lower salaries than municipal councillors and was roasted about the lack of employment and economic opportunities for the youth.
The king was expressing the frustration felt by thousands of his subjects, since poor road and health infrastructure has claimed many lives, discouraged tourists from visiting the area, dissuaded doctors from working in public hospitals and held back economic development.
A sheepish Ramaphosa promised to address the concerns of the king, who sadly died in November 2019 without the government moving an inch on its promises.
Across our country, former homelands have become enclaves of poverty, heavily reliant on social grants and remittances sent home by migrant workers living in cities.
The lack of infrastructure development in former homelands and black townships was also lamented by retired politician Alec Erwin at a seminar organised by the University of Johannesburg in July 2018 to discuss the evolution of SA’s economic policies since 1994.
Erwin, who led the ministries of public enterprises and trade & industry, told the seminar the government tried to intervene from about 2004 to address the lack of infrastructure and economic development in black areas, but the administration that came into power after the 2007 Polokwane elective conference neglected these areas.
He pointed out that the neglect of former homelands and townships had been perpetuated by the decline in tax revenues and the weakening of state-owned enterprises, and provincial and local governments.
According to the Treasury’s 2020 Budget Review, the government spent R3.2-trillion on infrastructure between 1998 and 2019. However, little of this rollout has reached rural areas like Gatyana, which have huge backlogs inherited from the colonial and apartheid eras. In the case of the Eastern Cape, the infrastructure backlog is estimated at more than R150bn.
The situation is laid bare in the Eastern Cape provincial infrastructure plan (ECIP), developed to articulate the province’s infrastructure priorities between 2016 and 2030 and outline interventions to address backlogs.
These include:
● Backlogs related to water provision are estimated at R33bn, while sanitation is projected at R13bn. At the same time, water backlogs have been nearly eliminated in East London, Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth) and the Sarah Baartman district.
● In 2016, the ECIP estimated that 235,000 homes were without electricity connection and R6.4bn was required to eliminate the backlog. Earlier this month the Eastern Cape government indicated that the backlog had dipped below 100,000 unelectrified households, even though there has been growth of housing extensions next to already electrified areas.
● The ECIP shows there are 3,000km of provincial gravel roads that have sufficient traffic to warrant upgrading to tar. At R15m a kilometre, it would cost R45bn to do so. The province also has a road maintenance backlog estimated at R25bn.
● On the education front, there is a backlog of R83bn for school infrastructure, with mud schools and unsafe pit latrines still a headache for the province. An annual budget of R10bn for the next 10 years is required to eliminate the backlog. The Eastern Cape government spends about R1.5bn a year on schools infrastructure.
● With regard to health care, 70%-80% of facilities are deteriorating, with repairs and maintenance requiring R1.9bn. The Covid-19 pandemic exposed serious weaknesses in the Eastern Cape’s health-care infrastructure, prompting the provincial government to announce in 2020 that it would spend R50m to upgrade 28 hospitals.
The province has in the past announced infrastructure projects aimed at boosting its economy and creating jobs.
In December 2019, the Eastern Cape government announced it had received the go-ahead to implement big projects including a R4.8bn broadband infrastructure project, the R4.3bn Wild Coast meander project, R1bn for the Dimbaza Agri Village and Eco Industrial Park, and the Ndlambe water and sanitation project, costing R1.1bn.
No detailed update has been given about these projects since the announcement.
Ramaphosa needs to push the provincial government to make good on the promises he made the late king in 2018 about delivering infrastructure. This needs to be extended to helping other former homelands get the infrastructure they require to contribute to the country’s economic development, instead of being reduced to laboursending areas dependent on social grants and remittances for survival.