Riots, marches on Parliament and the lynching of a local official have highlighted growing unrest at the failure to improve the lives of South Africans who bore the brunt of apartheid.
”It is like we are not living in South Africa, we are not part of the democracy everyone enjoys,” says Ngethembi Myaka as she nurses a gunshot wound sustained during protests in Soweto, the township on the outskirts of Johannesburg which was a hotbed of opposition to the old whites-only regime.
The mother of two, hit in the back by a rubber-coated bullet, lives only a stone’s throw from the old home of anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela.
But 13 years after Mandela became the first black president of South Africa, Myaka says her family remains as neglected as ever by the authorities.
The 24-year-old is stuck in Jabulani Hostel, forced to share a room with 16 other people. Couples who try to have a bit of privacy can only draw a curtain around their beds. Ngethembi shares her bed with her two young children.
The residents have the use of a single paraffin stove, with power cuts ensuring the electric cooker is only sporadically available.
The living room windows looking out on to a wasteland are broken, while the communal showers rarely yield more than a trickle of water.
”We have nothing,” she says. ”Better life and freedom is something we only read about in the newspapers enjoyed by certain parts of the society.”
Complaints about service delivery are legion among people that expected a transformation in their lives when the African National Congress took power in the first multiracial elections in 1994.
Days after last weekend’s riots in Johannesburg’s townships, in which 23 people were arrested, hundreds of disaffected residents marched on Parliament to protest shoddy housing in another major township near Cape Town.
Earlier this month, an ANC councillor in the central Free State was hacked to death by rioters protesting against service delivery.
In his State of the Nation address in February, President Thabo Mbeki acknowledged much remained to be done.
”It is a fact that eight million people are still without potable water. Many more are without electricity and sanitation,” he said.
”We will continue to confront these challenges so as to erase in our country that which is ugly and repulsive so that together we can speak of freedom and the happiness that comes with liberty.”
Life has improved for some in the townships — a dumping ground for black residents barred by pass laws in upmarket white areas during apartheid.
Parts of Soweto now boast their own millionaires’ row but life for residents of hostels that were built by the apartheid authorities to house migrant labour has shown little change for the better.
”Go anywhere else in Soweto and you will see that people have everything they need,” said Ngethembi.
”We don’t have electricity, water, our sewerage systems are old and dysfunctional, our yards and roads dusty and dirty, and we have no rubbish bins.”
Bongani Hlongwane, who has lived in nearby Dube hostel for 25 years, said the authorities only seemed to begin listening when anger boiled over.
”We have been drumming this in to their heads that we need development in the hostels like anywhere else, that we want proper houses, that we need to be recognised,” he said.
”But it seem the only language they understand is when we burn tyres and toyi-toyi”.
According to Hannah Botsis, a researcher for the South African Institute of Race Relations, the government is struggling to meet the demands of a growing population and had been overly ambitious in some of its pledges.
”Obviously the ANC inherited huge living-condition problems from apartheid and were too ambitious in their promises from the start,” he said.
”The government should not make promises that it is unable to deliver on to appease the masses because this will ultimately backfire.” ‒ Sapa-AFP