Bethlehem - After a decade of
living in a tiny corrugated iron shack, Nyani Moloi was ecstatic
when she was handed the keys to a two-bedroom brick house built
by the government.
But the unemployed grandmother's joy quickly turned to anger
when she discovered the home has no running water or
electricity; the toilet does not flush, and rain seeps through
the walls.
"I am heartbroken by the condition of the house," Moloi, 59,
told Reuters as she pointed out damp patches in the home she
shares with four grandchildren in the town of Bethlehem in Free
State.
The squalid conditions in a R150 million housing project known as Baken Park highlight how efforts by ruling ANC to address persistent
racial disparities in housing, land ownership and services have
faltered, a generation after white minority rule ended in 1994.
It is an issue that could dent support for Africa's oldest
liberation party in elections next week for parliament and
provincial legislatures, a vote that will determine the
country's next president.
President Cyril Ramaphosa, who took office last year, has
promised to accelerate land redistribution, improve service
delivery and build a million houses over five years.
Political analysts say an ANC victory is all-but assured,
but the party has been struggling to reverse dwindling support
blamed in part on unfulfilled promises to improve the lives of
millions of South Africa's poorest people.
PUBLIC ANGER
In a number of townships across the country, residents have
taken to the streets in recent months to demand land, houses,
sanitation infrastructure, water and electricity.
Public anger has been aggravated by perceptions that some
government officials and their business allies are growing rich
from corruption.
A spokesman for the police's elite "Hawks" unit said it was
investigating allegations of tender irregularities in a number
of municipal housing and other improvement projects but did not
provide details.
ANC spokesman Dakota Legoete said the party was determined
to root out corruption and had taken steps including setting up
judicial enquiries.
But the party faces a potentially even more formidable
challenge: South Africa's economy has barely grown over the past
decade and government revenue has come in below target in recent
years, hampering the state's efforts to address an array of
social needs.
Nyani Moloi prepares food for her granddaughter in her kitchen in the Baken Park township near Bethlehem. Picture: Sumaya Hisham/Reuters
Housing projects like the one in Bethlehem must compete for
resources with initiatives such as free education and social
grants for millions of poor South Africans.
During the election campaign, Ramaphosa visited a township
located within sight of South Africa's main financial district
where many people still live in shacks and sewage pools in the
streets. Residents there had been staging protests for weeks
over the poor conditions.
"Your message is very clear," Ramaphosa told a packed
stadium in Alexandra. "We cannot
allow our people to live among the filth that I have seen."
Such assurances are not enough to persuade some voters,
though. In Baken Park, Moloi, 59, doubts she would cast a ballot
for the ANC again.
Two years after moving into her home, she is still without
running water or electricity. Legally, she doesn't own the house
or the land it stands on: she has yet to receive a title deed
for the property.
"When it comes to elections, they come and tell us
everything and anything so that we can vote for them, but they
do nothing for us," Moloi said of the ANC's candidates.
BROKEN PROMISES
The ANC won the loyalty of millions for helping to deliver
an end to decades of oppressive white rule, during which members
of the black majority were forced into crowded urban townships
and impoverished rural reserves with minimal public services.
But for many of those dispossessed under apartheid, the
establishment of a vibrant all-race democracy has not translated
into broad improvements in their living conditions.
Estimates vary, but the consensus is that most privately
owned land remains in white hands making it a potent symbol of
wider economic disparities.
The Baken Park housing project is part of a Reconstruction
and Development Programme (RDP) introduced by the ANC in 1994 to
alleviate poverty and inequality, including by providing
subsidised houses to families earning less than 3,500 rand per
month.
Over the past 25 years, the government has provided more
than 4.7 million homes to the elderly and the poor, according to
the national Department of Human Settlements. But officials say
demand has outstripped supply due to rapid urbanisation,
resulting in a shortage of 2.1 million homes.
Moloi, a widowed mother of four, lived most of her life in
rural parts of the province before relocating to a shanty town
near Bethlehem in 2007 to be closer to job opportunities.
She thought life would be easier when she moved into a home
with modern conveniences such as a toilet and kitchen, but said
it hadn't changed much.
"I cook with a gas stove because there is no electricity,"
she said. "I cook with it outside. When the rain pours outside,
I get drenched in water."
The housing project lies about 4 km (2.5 miles) from
Bethlehem's town centre, which has upmarket suburbs that were
once exclusively for white people but have since opened up to
all who can afford to buy property there.
From a distance, the rows of brick homes look like a big
improvement over the nearby shanty town known as Captain
Charles, where Moloi used to live. Residents there said about
100 households share four pit toilets and a single water tap.
With no functioning sewage system, Maloi must use a water
bucket to flush her toilet. Some of her neighbours prefer to dig
pit latrines.
Residents said authorities assured them that water and
electricity would be provided to the homes within two or three
months of occupation, but nothing happened.
A spokeswoman for the Free State's human settlements
department, Senne Bogatsu, said authorities recognised that "not
all basic services could be completed in time".
A new contractor has been hired to rectify the problems and
taps installed outside homes as a temporary measure, she said.
Construction on the project, which began in 2013, continues
with 843 houses out of a target of 1,000 built so far, Bogatsu
said.