WeeklySA_AdminFRENZY: Greed, corruption and failure to take responsibility for many of ANC shortcomings is what has come to characterise the ruling party’s elites since 1994
At the time of writing this article 24 people have already died – all of them Africans, as if it is necessary to state what has become obvious – from a preventable disease in Hammanskraal, north of Pretoria, and the Free State, in recent days. Scores are still hospitalised.
The victims are people living in areas such as Temba location, a peri-urban township and – most likely – villages in and around these under-developed, apartheid-era residential settlements which have also been neglected by the ANC government.
Hammanskraal and surrounds is less than 50km from Pretoria, the administrative capital of the country and one of the most developed cities in South Africa and the African continent. Yet, Africans still die from cholera, a disease deputy Health Minister Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo rightly pointed out is preventable. Prominent Medico Dr Aslam Dasoo and several other people have also said the same. It is a crying shame and an indictment of the ANC government.
The people of Gauteng – in particular – are aware that Hammanskraal residents have been complaining about the unhealthy water they are forced to drink for more than 10 years. The Tshwane council, depending on who controls it (invariably the DA or ANC) which is responsible for the supply of clean, potable water here has been playing political games with the residents. Instead of providing clean, hygienic water, the party in charge of the council at the time will claim they inherited the problem from the previous administration. It has been like this for the past 15 or so years.
That the ANC is simply out of touch with what was happening in Hammanskraal was amply demonstrated by Gauteng Health MEC Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko (by then the death toll stood at six) when she declared with a straight face that the government has always been on the ground in Hammanskraal, implying they were working to mitigate the water problem in the area. It was a blatant untruth. As the South African Human Rights Commission has rightly pointed out, the Hammanskraal tragedy has been in the making for nearly two decades.
As the government scrambles to deal with the Hammanskraal tragedy amid fears of a cholera outbreak in other provinces – the Free State has officially reported six cases, thankfully with no fatalities – we should not miss the real bigger picture: government’s woeful failure to provide clean, potable water to black communities throughout the country – in rural, semi-rural and even townships.
In some of these areas, people still share water with livestock. This is a problem our people have faced since the ANC came to power 29 years ago. During apartheid, our people expected to be treated as less than human.
Black South Africans must ask hard questions about the ANC government. How can a government, which purports to be committed to a better life for all, live high on the hog while millions of those who voted for them live below poverty levels. How can the ANC Cabinet Ministers, their deputies who are already over paid earning more a million rand a year spend more than R90 million to refurbish their official residences. Worse, part of this obscene amount was used to insulate these elites from the daily challenges faced by ordinary citizens such as loadshedding and water shortages.
Some of the country’s water woes are a direct legacy of ANC corruption. The Nandoni dam in Limpopo, which was earmarked to supply water to several villages, is a case in point. When it was conceived more than 10 years ago, it was estimated it would cost under half a billion rand.
Several years later, the project is still incomplete – but billions have already been spent. This problem is replicated in other provinces. Lesotho’s Polihali water project, which is expected to mitigate some of Gauteng’ s water challenges, should have been completed by now – but has been delayed for another five years.
One water expert at the Free State University blames a certain ANC Minister for this, because she wanted some of her associates to get a cut from this project. As we have infamously come to know, it is time for comrades to eat. The country is suffering because of her greed. Greed, corruption and failure to take responsibility for many of the ANC shortcomings is what has come to characterise the ruling party’s elites since 1994.
When Nkomo-Ralehoko declared that government was on top of matters, she was behaving true to type. Denialism.
It is the same denialism displayed a week earlier by Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan when he addressed Parliament’ s Scopa committee. Even after so many years listening to ANC MPs giving fibs, fictions and downright denials on matters of national importance, I was ill-prepared for what Gordhan said.
Here he was talking with a straight face that whatever energy problems the country faces, it is not the result of the corruption of the ruling party. The fact that some multinational corporations have been engaged in corruption is no excuse for the ANC doing the same. To borrow from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, referring to the apartheid regime, we expected no less from them but hoped for a different moral compass from the ANC. The ANC styles itself as the leader of society. If they genuinely believe they are such, why do they then sink to the levels of some of these multinationals who have swelled their coffers with corrupt activities all over the globe.
Gordhan is most likely right when he says De Ruyter took the Eskom job with a hidden motive. I also suspect, as does Gordhan, that from day one when he started his job at Megawatt Park he was in all likelihood secretly tape-recording some of his interlocutors.
It defies logic that a book of such complexity and so many legal minefields could be written and finished in a space of three to four months even if he was helped by the best ghost writers and legal minds.
But all this aside. Let us look at the contents in the book. Eskom was destroyed by the central role played by some of the ANC bigwigs. We cannot run away from this, and this is what Gordhan should have dealt with in his address to Scopa. I have no doubt that De Ruyter was working in concert with forces hellbent on destroying the ruling party.
But ANC bigwigs who were engaged in corruption at the power utility played straight into their enemies’ hands. I believe the feeding frenzy at Eskom could have been halted long before the corporation was destroyed, if it wasn’t for the fact that too many highly placed ANC leaders were benefitting. It was revealing that Gordhan says the destruction didn’t occur only during state capture period, but continues even today. It is under your watch Gordhan and what are you doing about it.
Sibongiseni Dlhomo has admitted that the Hammanskraal tragedy was preventable. Water and Sanitation Minister Senzo Mchunu says the water problem in the area should have been dealt with years ago. Here is hoping this tragedy will be a wake-up call to a crisis which could morph into a national tragedy.
