Mid-morning on election day in Nkandla in northern KwaZulu-Natal is as good a time as any to learn the fine line between helping the aged and groping a gogo.
After flagging down the Mail & Guardian a few kilometres from ANC president Jacob Zuma’s homestead in KwaNxamalala, 76-year-old Rhoda Khanyile’s first words were: “I’m going to vote for Msholozi, take me to that school over there.”
Getting her into the car proved a fumbling mix of heaving, or retreating from, bits of flesh.
Not that Khanyile appeared embarrassed. On the contrary, she, like many of the residents in this scattered hamlet, is incapable of bridling her enthusiasm for what a post-April 22 political dispensation headed by homeboy Zuma would bring.
Or what his ascendancy has already brought — the reasons many local people are voting for him. “Msholozi has brought computers for the schools, he has given us electricity and our pensions. Msholozi has brought development to Nkandla, so I must vote for him,” says Khanyile.
Inkosi Vela Shange says Nkandla was ignored both before 1994 by the KwaZulu government and since, when the municipality has been run by the IFP. The party holds 11 of the 14 wards here.
“The IFP are sleeping here, but now we are getting water and electricity because of Zuma and in spite of the IFP,” he says.
Most people in this impoverished area draw no distinction between majority party and delivery by the state in KwaZulu-Natal — which opposition parties have criticised for mobilising support for Zuma; both in the build-up to the ANC’s conference in Polokwane in 2007 and in the electioneering leading up to this week’s election.
With unemployment as high as 90% in parts of the Nkandla area, which has a population of about 140 000, development is desperately sought.
And it has to be admitted that in the past five years things have improved in this stretch of hills, where time — as if in awe of the rugged beauty — otherwise appears to stand still.
The roads have improved considerably — unless it rains. Perhaps the best stretch leads up to Zuma’s compound, where one dominant, rotund rondavel is surrounded by a coterie of smaller ones.
A few weeks ago national Minerals and Energy Minister Buyelwa Sonjica accompanied Zuma to switch on the Benedict substation in Nkandla’s Emjahweni district.
Built in 2007 at a cost of R54-million and costing a further R48-million to connect 10 500 homes and nine schools, the substation will eventually electrify 24 000 houses.
Last week Zuma unveiled a pasture fencing project at Ntolwane Primary School — where he voted this week.
Near the school a proposed administrative centre for the department of local government and traditional affairs is under construction. The ANC appeared to up its Zuma-peddling game in the build-up to April 22 in an apparent attempt to win the symbolic victory of bettering the IFP in what was once considered the latter’s stronghold.
But some developments may have other political motives.
The recently completed R13-million Mamba One Stop Service Delivery Centre, including facilities for home affairs offices, which have improved access to identity documents, and social development offices, has been criticised as an attempt by provincial social development minister Meshack Radebe to ingratiate himself with the dominant Zuma faction in KwaZulu-Natal.
Radebe, considered a Thabo Mbeki acolyte in the run up to Polokwane, hotly denies the charge. So does the ANC.
But things are not going entirely to plan. Across the road from the Mamba centre the Thusong Service Centre is running “terribly”, says centre manager Sebenzile Shange. She says renovations to the building, which was built in 2006, stalled two years ago.
“We have no offices, so we are not functioning properly, the department of social development now come once a week, home affairs even less — but we always have a problem with them,” she says.
Shange says she was led to believe that there would be no duplication of services when the Mambo centre was initially mooted. But “last week they took away a social worker that I’d hired”.
Ntolweni Primary School principal Mdumseni Gwala is hopeful that Zuma’s presidency will mean money flows in to improve the school. Gwala hopes more toilets can be built so that his 615 learners have more than just six pit latrines to share. He also wants to hire more teachers to improve learner-teacher ratios, currently standing at 47:1.
“You know the saying that charity begins at home. Here, Msholozi is at home,” Gwala says.
Already thankful, but also expectant that the ANC’s promise of a “better life for all” will resonate through these hills and valleys, the residents of Nkandla appear to be a microcosm of a nation yearning for change.
Highlighting one of the toughest challenges facing Zuma, even in Nkandla’s idyll, Khanyile says she was waiting in line for a pension payout at the beginning of the month when the payout point was stormed and robbed by a gang armed with AK-47s.
“They just came and started shooting and three people died. I didn’t eat for about three days,” said the elderly woman.