Ulundi is less a town and more a cluster of houses around an intersection, a taxi and untended cows, in the vicinity of which the former KwaZulu homeland government’s massive legislature building sits uncomfortably.
Among the leopard trees and livestock ambling on the road, the three-storey building looks like a corporate Hanging Gardens of Babylon — minus the plants. Glass, concrete and brick make up the outside — and it is virtually empty on the inside.
Despite Inkatha Freedom Party protests, the democratically elected KwaZulu-Natal parliament moved permanently from Ulundi to Pietermaritzburg in 2002.
Since then, and despite the combined attempts of various government departments — including those of education, social development and home affairs — to fill it, the gargantuan building still resembles a desolate trading room after a market crash. On the first floor, especially, there are mounds of outdated word-processors, computers and furniture. Office dividers are piled up and there is enough empty floor space to graze a herd of carpet-eating Nguni bulls.
The lights in this behemoth are kept on all night while, a few hundred metres away, in Ulundi’s B-north section, people complain that the street lamps never work.
Said 27-year-old Sibusiso Zungu: “In 15 years the street lights have maybe worked four or five days a year. The roads here have not been completed since last year. I’m sick of the politics and I’m sick of the IFP, but I will vote NFP [National Freedom Party] because I’m hoping they can bring a change to my life.”
It is a Tuesday afternoon and Zungu, who is unemployed, is hanging around outside an IFP MP’s house with a group of 20-something males in IFP T-shirts. The group is “campaigning”: chilling out, shooting the breeze and responding good-naturedly to both pro-IFP and pro-NFP comments from passersby returning from work.
That Zungu is a supporter of the NFP, a party led by former Zululand district mayor Zanele Magwaza-Msibi that splintered from the IFP in January, is of little significance to his mates.
One of them, with a picture of IFP president Mangosuthu Buthelezi on his T-shirt, is vociferous in his partisanship: “I am born IFP, I will die IFP. Look around: all the schools here were built by the IFP; even the Mangosuthu Technikon, it was built by Shenge [Buthelezi’s praise name]. The IFP is here for us.” The 24-year-old, who requested that his name be withheld, admits, though, that his brother is an NFP supporter.
Analysts and politicians have noted that the formation of the NFP, which has divided families in their political loyalties, has resulted in very little political violence in KwaZulu-Natal. A more visible police and army presence in hot spots and the increasing maturity of rural voters has contributed.
It is an opinion shared by ANC volunteer Tashi Zungu who, in a bright yellow Jacob Zuma T-shirt, is pamphleteering outside the former legislature building. Zungu said the campaigning “has been smooth, but we are going to Nongoma [the scene of previous violent face-offs between the IFP and ANC] tomorrow, then we will see”.
Across the road, BMW convertibles with ANC election signage emblazoned on the sides are parked with their tops down, house music blaring from the speakers. Pretty girls in weaves and skintight clothes are jiving and laughing. It is rather more glamorous than the IFP gathering of unemployed youth a few blocks down. Nearby, though, the police’s special tactical response team, usually deployed to violent crimes, is keeping an eye on the ANC jive-athon.
Tashi Zungu’s 19-year-old daughter, Cookie Thatchell, decked out in silver front teeth, blue contact lenses, plastic jewellery and an ANC T-shirt, is adamant that the party will do better in Ulundi it has than in previous elections: “The youth have nothing to do here. There are no malls and no job opportunities. They want Ulundi to modernise and they will vote for the ANC,” she said.
With its streets named after Zulu royalty and its position as the “cornerstone of Zulu identity, culture and politics”, as political analyst Protas Madlala described Ulundi, the place has a past, but many — from the youth to the elderly who are fed up with dysfunctional local government — wonder whether it has a future.
Dr Thulani Khoza, who has practised in Ulundi since 1989, said: “Nothing has really changed here. Businesses are here in spite of local government, not because of it. There are more shopping centres, but nothing really in terms of job opportunities or recreational activities — and, because of the lack of water supply, certainly no industry here. At 5pm everyone vanishes from the town.”
Khoza, whose practice is extremely busy, opened new consulting rooms near Ulundi’s taxi rank in 2009 and said he “had to go to the municipality 12 or 15 times to get a water supply while building my practice” and then “another seven or eight times to get my practice connected to the water and electricity supply so that I can be operational”.
Madlala said that in this year’s local government elections what happens in Ulundi’s 24 wards will be a good indicator of the electoral strength of the fledgling NFP, the state of decay of the IFP and what sort of penetration the ANC has had in an increasingly mature rural KwaZulu-Natal.
In the 2006 local election the IFP won 92,99% of the vote (all 24 wards and 20 proportional representation list seats) in Ulundi, while the ANC pulled a paltry 3,9% of the vote and two proportional representation seats. In the 2009 national election the ANC won 14,92% of the overall vote in the town to the IFP’s 83,62% — a steady encroachment.
“If you factor in Magwaza-Msibi’s good reputation as district mayor of Zululand, which does not necessarily mean the demise of the IFP, Ulundi will be a good gauge of the current form of the three players in rural KwaZulu-Natal,” said Madlala.
Nkandla
If Ulundi represents the hubris of the apartheid government and the current travails of the IFP warhorse, then Nkandla is perhaps more about President Jacob Zuma. It’s also about the effect that he — with the emerging sense of being “completely fed up with government” that the rural marginalised are feeling — has had.
Nkandla remains an IFP municipality and in the 2006 local government elections the party won all 14 wards, with 85,03% of the vote compared with the ANC’s 12,16% share.
However, the ANC saw a stunning jump in support between the previous two national elections. In 2004 it managed to win just 7,88% of the vote in the area compared with the IFP’s 88,21%, while in 2009 the ANC trumped the IFP with 50,17% to the IFP’s 46,16%.
Many analysts have put this down to the “homeboy effect” of Zuma. But there is also escalating unhappiness with all spheres of government and an increasing perception among rural folk that “we are always forgotten; it’s just the politicians and those around them who benefit from democracy”, as one Ulundi teacher said.
In KwaNxamalala, in the Nkandla area, where Zuma has his traditional home, a resident who asked not to be named said: “More and more people on the streets are saying things . They are saying that the only development happening here is for the president and his family. Not for the ordinary people; we are still not seeing anything.”
The area around Zuma’s private homestead is a mess of dug-up roads and construction paraphernalia — part of a R65-million upgrade, courtesy of taxpayers. Zuma’s compound appears to have quadrupled in size since he became president and the Mail & Guardian counted at least nine new structures being built behind the compound. These, according to workers, will house soldiers.
Everything else appears to have stood still — the roads are ragged and people complain about running water and houses. At Ntolwane Primary School, where Zuma voted in 2009 and will again on May 18, very little has changed.
In 2009 the principal, Mdumseni Gwala, told the M&G that he hoped Zuma’s ascendancy to the presidency would mean more attention paid by government or business to his school. What he really wanted was proper flush toilets for his learners.
There is a stench of sewage around the toilet building, which still does not have a water connection or flushing facilities. According to the teachers, “the little ones are still defecating in the bush, just over there. This is a shame, because they must do it in full view of the village.”
The M&G spoke to four teachers at Ntolwane Primary School, all of whom said they couldn’t be bothered to vote: “It’s all the same; whichever party we vote for, [it] just means that their individuals will get richer while our lives remain the same. The only thing that may make me vote is if I think I can scare the councillors and the parties into believing there is competition [for our votes],” said one.
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