The first glimpse of Balfour is promising. A road that was full of potholes three months ago is being renovated. Shops that were looted and empty have been restocked and children at Vusumuzi Primary School are back in their classrooms.
In Siyathemba township there are garbage collectors, dressed in white surgical-looking plastic suits, going about their business.
Nomasondo Soldaat and Thokozile Zulu are standing outside their homes, waiting to bring in their bins. The women are impressed by what’s happened ”since the toyi-toying”.
Zulu gestures towards the street: ”They’re collecting the rubbish and they’re fixing the roads.”
But some residents are sceptical about the road-fixing initiative. They say that Burnstone Mine should take the credit, not the municipality.
Tshitso Mofokeng agrees: ”Nothing has changed, because there is no work and people still want houses.”
Mofokeng, like others who spoke to the Mail & Guardian, says the mayor remains conspicuous by his absence — something Lefty Tsotetsi himself challenges.
”I have been to four of the six wards in Dipaleseng municipality to tell them of progress made since the service delivery protests,” Tsotetsi says.
Youth spokesperson Zakhele Maya confirms the ward meetings were held, but says only about 50 senior citizens attended. He attributes the low turnout to poor publicity and the fact that ”people have just lost confidence in the mayor”.
One reason for this is the poor water quality in the area. Turn on a tap and a brown, murky stream dribbles out –just as it has done for months. Tsotetsi says there is a plan to clean the reservoir, but ”we are still discussing [the issue] with water affairs”.
Amin Patel runs the Sizabantu store. He says he doesn’t trust the tap water: ”It is dirty, so I don’t drink it, just Coke.” He is an Indian national and his shop was looted during the protests. He decided to return because ”I’m here to do business.”
Pakistani shopkeeper Javed Achtar shares this view. He says he regained his trust when the community welcomed back its foreign residents at a special ceremony at the local stadium.
”They invited us on stage so we could read our holy book in front of the people,” he says. The ceremony was part of a rehabilitation initiative, led by a ministerial task team sent to Balfour after the president’s visit, with assistance from the South African Council of Churches.
But it may take more than this to heal the rifts in Balfour’s fractured society.
Not far from Achtar’s shop, two young men share a cigarette outside one of the township’s many bottlestores. Jabu* (17) and Bongani* (19) participated in the July service protests, but say they don’t know why they bothered: nothing has changed.
They agree unemployment is Balfour’s biggest problem. ”There’s nothing to do here except smoke marijuana,” says Jabu.
Maya predicts that the situation will worsen, especially now that Eskom, a major local employer, is downsizing.
Tsotetsi hopes that a ”youth summit”, scheduled for early November, will provide some solutions, but only if the private sector gets involved.
Meanwhile, Jabu and Bongani have heard nothing about the youth summit and aren’t optimistic about the future.
”I’m looking where to steal next year, because there is no work,” says Bongani.
* Not their real names
