It is about 8.40am on Wednesday in Phomolong, the Free State township about 50km from Welkom. The truck collecting night soil is doing its rounds for the first time in two weeks. A dozen armoured police cars carrying rolled barbed wire stand across the street from several hundred uniformed schoolchildren. School officially started 40 minutes ago.
Circles of black ash and wire that once were tyres, and rocks placed across the street to stop traffic from entering or leaving the township, speak of an explosion waiting to happen.
At a meeting at the local library, the message is clear: the African National Congress is wrong, or is refusing to face facts, by demeaning the violence that rocked this part of the Free State as the work of seditious troublemakers.
Residents point to bricks that were delivered “in 2000 or 2001”, supposedly for the building of Reconstruction and Development Programme houses. Some houses had sewerage pipes ending in the front garden.
In the same street, women queue at the Mohammed CafÃ