Apartheid policies turned the Transkei homeland into a disaster area which will take years to repair, writes Louise Flanagan
IT’S underfunded, marginalised, demoralised, has little infrastructure or communications, and its services are collapsing. It’s one of apartheid’s worst legacies and it’s now the Eastern Cape’s biggest nightmare.
It’s the former Transkei homeland.
Since the April 1994 elections the Eastern Cape government has slowly discovered the extent of the problems in the former homeland, the most obvious one being the inherited overdraft which stood at R98-million in December.
This week the regional government announced that a commission of inquiry has been set up under acting Judge Jules Browde, although it has not yet started work.
Transkei is a graphic illustration of the costs of apartheid. The challenge now is to put it together again. The problems seem worse than those in the three other once “independent or just interim solutions” territories.
The key reason is that Transkei was severely underfunded, particularly during the six years of military government rule under Major General Bantu Holomisa when he continually clashed with then-president FW de Klerk’s government.
“The whole saga started when we wanted to surround the big fishes,” said Holomisa this week, referring to his government’s attempts to charge hotel magnate Sol Kerzner with bribery and his clashes with then-Minister of Foreign Affairs Pik Botha.
“When we refused to budge, that was the price we paid.”
The price was regular lengthy delays in the transfer of monies from central government and a cut in funding. This meant that less than 10 percent of the budget was capital expenditure.
For a territory which is largely rural, has little infrastructure or facilities, the lack of capital expenditure has been disastrous and will take years to repair.
What services did exist have now collapsed. Unemployment and underemployment was estimated two years ago at 84.4 percent by the Border-Kei Development Forum. Hospitals and clinics do not function. Industrialists will not invest there.
Policing is in crisis and has been for years. Civil servants are regarded as unco-operative and unjustifiably demanding.
The former homeland is now is such a bad way that President Nelson Mandela himself, who was born there, is taking a personal interest in the problem.
The executive director of the Transkei Chamber of Industries, Les Holbrook, has lived in the industrial town of Butterworth for 13 years and seen the Matanzimas and Holomisa come and go. Holbrook agrees that underfunding is a key problem.
“For the last five years Transkei hasn’t spent a cent on capital projects,” he said. “They haven’t had the money.”
Holbrook does not yet see a light at the end of the tunnel. “The present government has the will but I don’t think they have the means (to deal with the problems),” he said.
Holbrook said key problems for industrialists are lawlessness and the unco-operative civil service. “The disobedience of the civil service is unprecedented anywhere else in South Africa.”
The postal system has “always been a problem” and telecommunications are “an absolute shambles”. Electricity is expensive but power failures in industries are common.
Butterworth, the main industrial area, does not have a transitional local council. Both Butterworth and the Umtata municipalities exist on a day-to-day basis.
According to the Transkei Development Corporation’s senior economist Isaac Ekar, there are currently 79 large scale formal industries in the former territory. Two new companies arrived last year and none left, an improvement on the previous two years when seven new companies arrived but 27 closed down.
There is little to attract industrialists now that the incentive schemes have been abandoned.
Corruption has always been a problem and Mandela himself has commented that there has been “massive corruption in which millions if not billions has been embezzled”.
“The records and my track record will show that people were prosecuted and arrested … We were not just sitting there with folded arms,” said Holomisa.
Taxpayers are still paying for crazy schemes inherited from the Matanzima era. Only two days before the April elections an international court ordered payment of a debt of nearly R100-million to an Austrian company for 200 tractors bought by the Matanzimas in the early 1980s, many of which have not been accounted for.
There are between 70 000 to 80 000 civil servants, about half the total of all the four former homelands. Fifty percent of the budget goes on their salaries.
Although Holomisa was in power for over six years he said he could do little to restructure the huge civil service. “I don’t say we could not have done anything,” he said. “But had I started that (restructuring) during negotiations I would have sent a wrong signal.” He did however lower the retirement age by five years. “That was the only thing I could do.”
Holomisa says the civil service is huge because it relies on manual labour. There are few computers and messages have to be posted or even hand delivered rather than faxed.
He increased the size of the security forces by several hundred a year, saying this filled existing posts and eased unemployment. The military cost “less than two percent” of the total budget.
Regional ANC president Dumisani Mafu said Holomisa could not do much about the former homeland in isolation from the rest of the country. “He found the civil service there … It’s not his creation,” he said.
While the politicians struggle for answers, people in the former homeland feel abandoned and demoralised.
The former homeland is a disaster that took years to create. Even the most hopeful politicians know it will take years to repair.