Although it is well before sunrise, Nkqubela — on the outskirts of Robertson in the Western Cape — is stirring.
With little more than a sliver of light on the horizon, many residents are already awake and heading out to work in the chill air.
Most are wearing hardy black gumboots, the ubiquitous footwear of both farm and factory workers in the agro-processing industry, which is a cornerstone of the Langeberg District Municipality’s economy. The work is seasonal, making income uncertain and money scarce, and contributing to high poverty rates in the region. But according to Enathi Gxoma Nkqubela has experienced major improvements in recent years.
She talks to the Mail & Guardian while she waits to put her three-year-old daughter in a taxi that will ferry her to a local government crche.
“Things got better when the ANC took over,” Gxoma says emphatically from her perch in an armchair in the living room of her RDP home. She, her husband, their daughter and her brother-in-law moved into their new home last year.
“Before the ANC took over we stayed in a shack where we paid rent and they would cut off the electricity,” she says.
But, although things have improved, she would like to see the road outside her house tarred and more job opportunities in the region. Having matriculated in 2003, Gxoma has been “applying everywhere” for work, but to no avail.
Behind her home, further up the hillside, solid structures end and shacks begin. Residents without toilets use the bushes for their ablutions.
Improvements in Robertson
Despite this, “[local government] cannot do everything immediately”, Gxoma argues. “From where I am sitting there’s improvement in Robertson.”
The Langeberg municipality, which incorporates the towns of Ashton, Robertson, McGregor, Montagu and Bonnievale, is led by the ANC in a coalition government that includes two small parties — the Western Cape Community and the People’s Democratic Party.
And whereas local governments across the country have been blighted by service delivery issues, Langeberg has received unqualified audit reports for the past five years.
It has a collection rate of 99,5% and its municipal manager, Soyisile Mokweni, tells the M&G that the municipality has done extensive work to improve water quality and purification, spending more than R40-million on upgrading 60-year-old infrastructure.
The town has also spent almost R20-million to increase electricity supply to the town, he says from his office in Ashton, the municipality’s administrative centre.
But housing remains a problem, Mokweni concedes, as well as unemployment in a community in which 34% of households had a monthly income of less than R3500 in 2009.
When he became municipal manager the administration did not even have a housing department. “The [internal] capacity was almost nonexistent,” he says. “Now we have a housing plan that extends to 2015.”
Political affiliations
The waiting list for houses is 7500 strong, but in the past five years permanent structures have begun to significantly outnumber shacks in places like Nkqubela.
Langeberg’s mayor, John Ngonyama, attributes many of the municipality’s successes to a decision taken by the council to retain expertise in the municipality regardless of officials’ political affiliations.
It means that many of the executive management team are white males. And transformation is happening through the steady attrition of staff rather than a “purge” of individuals, as Ngonyama puts it.
A former teacher, he lives in Nkqubela in a modest house with a small yard. Speaking from his lounge, Ngonyama explains the emphasis the council has placed on ensuring that municipal officials in Langeberg remain focused on public service, above all.
“We said that from 8am to 4.30pm you will not be a politician. At the end of the day we are not here for us, we are here for people out there,” he says. “We need to have direct separation between politicians and officials.”
It has not been smooth sailing. Ngonyama is frustrated with one matter in particular: housing plans for the little hamlet of McGregor, where the municipality has battled to get approval to build low-cost housing for poor coloured residents.
Ngonyama says this is a rare example of the DA provincial government not being cooperative.
He believes provincial authorities have actively avoided taking a decision on the matter in a bid to erode the local municipality’s credibility among oloured voters in McGregor ahead of the May 18 elections.
But opposition leaders deny this. The DA’s Bill Eloff, Langeberg member of the provincial legislature, says the Western Cape housing department has yet to receive an application from the municipality to build houses in McGregor. The options that have been discussed thus far have been unsatisfactory, he says. They include the possibility of building homes in an area called Steenoonde, which is an “unacceptable” 4km outside McGregor.
Eloff is also sceptical about the municipality’s delivery record, saying that services have been delivered to areas like Nkqubela, a predominantly black area, whereas the needs of the larger coloured community have not been adequately met.
The provincial minister for local government, environmental affairs and development planning, Anton Bredell, told the M&G that the province has decided to “park the subject” until the election is over because it does not want to politicise the housing matter.
McGregor residents’ views on the matter are divided. Phillip Ronald Tiger, a local ANC leader who has lived there for 22 years, believes the issue amounts to politicking ahead of the polls. “They are playing petty politics with people’s lives,” he says of the province’s handling of the atter. But he believes voters are savvy enough to recognise this and will still vote for the ANC.
But Trevor Jordaan, born and raised in McGregor, says he has no faith in the ANC-led municipality because it has failed to deliver houses and other infrastructure to the poor. “I’m betting on the DA. Look at Cape Town — there are better acilities, better housing and infrastructure. It would be better with the DA,” he argues.
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