#Elections2019: Frustration over racial disparities builds ahead of polls

Nyani Moloi waters her spinach plants at the back of her house in the Baken Park township near Bethlehem. Picture: Sumaya Hisham/Reuters

Nyani Moloi waters her spinach plants at the back of her house in the Baken Park township near Bethlehem. Picture: Sumaya Hisham/Reuters

Published May 3, 2019

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Bethlehem - After a decade of

living in a tiny corrugated iron shack, Nyani Moloi was ecstatic

when she was handed the keys to a two-bedroom brick house built

by the government.

But the unemployed grandmother's joy quickly turned to anger

when she discovered the home has no running water or

electricity; the toilet does not flush, and rain seeps through

the walls.

"I am heartbroken by the condition of the house," Moloi, 59,

told Reuters as she pointed out damp patches in the home she

shares with four grandchildren in the town of Bethlehem in Free

State.

The squalid conditions in a R150 million housing project known as Baken Park highlight how efforts by ruling ANC to address persistent

racial disparities in housing, land ownership and services have

faltered, a generation after white minority rule ended in 1994.

It is an issue that could dent support for Africa's oldest

liberation party in elections next week for parliament and

provincial legislatures, a vote that will determine the

country's next president.

President Cyril Ramaphosa, who took office last year, has

promised to accelerate land redistribution, improve service

delivery and build a million houses over five years.

Political analysts say an ANC victory is all-but assured,

but the party has been struggling to reverse dwindling support

blamed in part on unfulfilled promises to improve the lives of

millions of South Africa's poorest people.

PUBLIC ANGER

In a number of townships across the country, residents have

taken to the streets in recent months to demand land, houses,

sanitation infrastructure, water and electricity.

Public anger has been aggravated by perceptions that some

government officials and their business allies are growing rich

from corruption.

A spokesman for the police's elite "Hawks" unit said it was

investigating allegations of tender irregularities in a number

of municipal housing and other improvement projects but did not

provide details.

ANC spokesman Dakota Legoete said the party was determined

to root out corruption and had taken steps including setting up

judicial enquiries.

But the party faces a potentially even more formidable

challenge: South Africa's economy has barely grown over the past

decade and government revenue has come in below target in recent

years, hampering the state's efforts to address an array of

social needs.

Nyani Moloi prepares food for her granddaughter in her kitchen in the Baken Park township near Bethlehem. Picture: Sumaya Hisham/Reuters

Housing projects like the one in Bethlehem must compete for

resources with initiatives such as free education and social

grants for millions of poor South Africans.

During the election campaign, Ramaphosa visited a township

located within sight of South Africa's main financial district

where many people still live in shacks and sewage pools in the

streets. Residents there had been staging protests for weeks

over the poor conditions.

"Your message is very clear," Ramaphosa told a packed

stadium in Alexandra. "We cannot

allow our people to live among the filth that I have seen."

Such assurances are not enough to persuade some voters,

though. In Baken Park, Moloi, 59, doubts she would cast a ballot

for the ANC again.

Two years after moving into her home, she is still without

running water or electricity. Legally, she doesn't own the house

or the land it stands on: she has yet to receive a title deed

for the property.

"When it comes to elections, they come and tell us

everything and anything so that we can vote for them, but they

do nothing for us," Moloi said of the ANC's candidates.

BROKEN PROMISES

The ANC won the loyalty of millions for helping to deliver

an end to decades of oppressive white rule, during which members

of the black majority were forced into crowded urban townships

and impoverished rural reserves with minimal public services.

But for many of those dispossessed under apartheid, the

establishment of a vibrant all-race democracy has not translated

into broad improvements in their living conditions.

Estimates vary, but the consensus is that most privately

owned land remains in white hands making it a potent symbol of

wider economic disparities.

The Baken Park housing project is part of a Reconstruction

and Development Programme (RDP) introduced by the ANC in 1994 to

alleviate poverty and inequality, including by providing

subsidised houses to families earning less than 3,500 rand per

month.

Over the past 25 years, the government has provided more

than 4.7 million homes to the elderly and the poor, according to

the national Department of Human Settlements. But officials say

demand has outstripped supply due to rapid urbanisation,

resulting in a shortage of 2.1 million homes.

Moloi, a widowed mother of four, lived most of her life in

rural parts of the province before relocating to a shanty town

near Bethlehem in 2007 to be closer to job opportunities.

She thought life would be easier when she moved into a home

with modern conveniences such as a toilet and kitchen, but said

it hadn't changed much.

"I cook with a gas stove because there is no electricity,"

she said. "I cook with it outside. When the rain pours outside,

I get drenched in water."

The housing project lies about 4 km (2.5 miles) from

Bethlehem's town centre, which has upmarket suburbs that were

once exclusively for white people but have since opened up to

all who can afford to buy property there.

From a distance, the rows of brick homes look like a big

improvement over the nearby shanty town known as Captain

Charles, where Moloi used to live. Residents there said about

100 households share four pit toilets and a single water tap.

With no functioning sewage system, Maloi must use a water

bucket to flush her toilet. Some of her neighbours prefer to dig

pit latrines.

Residents said authorities assured them that water and

electricity would be provided to the homes within two or three

months of occupation, but nothing happened.

A spokeswoman for the Free State's human settlements

department, Senne Bogatsu, said authorities recognised that "not

all basic services could be completed in time".

A new contractor has been hired to rectify the problems and

taps installed outside homes as a temporary measure, she said.

Construction on the project, which began in 2013, continues

with 843 houses out of a target of 1,000 built so far, Bogatsu

said.

Reuters

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