Village snubs poll in protest against ‘failed promises’
Impoverished community in Eastern Cape arms itself and barricades roads to prevent voting
FIFTEEN years ago, Nelson Mandela visited one of South Africa’s most isolated villages. He came bearing promises of electricity, tapped water and a clinic.
On Wednesday, the rural community of Bhipa in the Eastern Cape barricaded two voting stations and effectively stopped the election there.
Their objection was that the government had failed to honour its promises of 1999.
The village, cut off from most of the rest of the country by mountainous terrain and crumbling roads, was the last outpost Mandela visited before his retirement in May 1999.
Today, the estimated 500 families rely on foul-smelling water from a maze of rivers that cut through the valley. Oil lamps and candles are still the only sources of light.
Unemployment is rife and most families depend on a barter economy. They trade livestock, crops and even clothing sent by relatives working on the mines in North West and Gauteng.
Every six months, households each contribute as much as R50 to grade the rutted road that zigzags through the village.
“No one cares about us ... [but] they want our vote,” said Nkolseko Mdukane, a community leader. The 32-year-old and a few dozen of his “comrades” began planning this week’s boycott in October last year.
“The ANC has always had our vote. We love the ANC. But it has taken us for granted,” he said.
A single ANC election campaign poster swayed on a pole on the edge of the village. Others were removed months ago.
On Wednesday, the villagers mobilised themselves into groups to place boulders and dig trenches on the roads to Lundzwana Junior and Dlephu Senior Secondary schools, where voting would take place.
Throughout the day, men and women, armed with knobkerries and sjamboks, used children to ferry messages between the two barricaded schools.
A handful of women provided the protesters with homemade bread and samp and buckets of magewu and water.
Even though the police, wearing bulletproof vests, claimed to have the “illegal demonstrations” under control, potential voters from neighbouring villages stayed away, intimidated by the chanting and marching.
By late afternoon, tempers in the crowd began to flare when an ANC delegation arrived to coax the villagers to the polls.
Thembile Luvela, the party’s regional representative, draped in a tailor-made ANC safari suit, began to lobby the crowd.
Thanking the villagers for voicing their grievances, he said he would personally ensure that Ntabankulu municipal mayor Vusi Mgoduka addressed their grievances.
“If you are not happy or satisfied with the government, you have a right to approach the ANC. We want you to vote so that you can have a voice,” he said.
Mgoduka, a member of the party’s provincial executive committee, could not be reached for comment.
In interviews, every family told a similar tale of poverty.
Thamsanqa Jiba, 49, stabbed his spade into his barren field and pointed to a dozen mud homes that were on the verge of collapse. In several homesteads, entire families huddled in what was left of their beehive-shaped rondavels. Large pieces of rusted corrugated iron and plastic sheets had been turned into makeshift roofs.
“The government has done absolutely nothing for us,” said Jiba.
In 1999, Mandela, accompanied by Royal Dutch Shell and Eskom executives, descended on the village in a military helicopter to launch a solar-generated electricity project.
The R150-million international joint venture, which has since folded, promised to bring power to homes in Bhipa and neighbouring villages that were beyond the reach of the national power grid.
The latest figures by Statistics South Africa show that of the 24 397 households inside the Ntabankulu municipal boundaries, only 5 684 have access to electricity, a mere 658 have tap water inside their houses and 536 have flush toilets.
Stats SA’s poverty trends survey for 2006 to 2011, released in Pretoria last month, singled out Ntabankulu as one of the country’s three most impoverished municipalities.
The schools in Bhipa are desperate to fill classrooms, but some parents prefer that their children herd livestock or learn a trade from the former miners.
In Bhipa, villagers have either never set foot in a classroom or dropped out before Grade 7.
Siyafana Mphetshwa, one of the few who managed to cast his vote, said he did not vote in defiance of the villagers — he was simply desperate to see change. “We’re told that we are free and must vote. I’ve voted twice and I still don’t have anything to show for it,” he said.
In October 2012, the provincial MEC for local government, Mlibo Qoboshiyane, visited the village to address the community on infrastructure backlogs and the need for basic services, including tarred roads, sport facilities, clinics, adequate housing and a community hall.
Yesterday Qoboshiyane said that about R1.1-billion was needed to tackle the electricity, water and road infrastructure backlog in Ntabankulu.
“The backlog is influenced by shortage of funds [but] infrastructure plans will be presented to relevant cabinet ministers to avail funds for delivery,” he said.
Qoboshiyane, who is also the ANC’s provincial spokesman, said although the government and the ruling party understood the plight of the community, “boycotting elections was not justifiable and worse to force others not to vote”.
Although the villagers claimed that fewer than 10 people, escorted by armed police officers, had voted on Wednesday, figures provided by the Independent Electoral Commission show that 27 people cast their votes for the ANC.