In kwaGqwarhu village in Xurana Mission the only people out of doors in the 31°C heat are school children making their way home, a young man trying to catch a sheep and 12 residents in a queue for paraffin at a community hall.
The nearby towns of Flagstaff and Lusikisiki bustle ahead of a visit by President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is coming to see the construction site of the highly anticipated Msikaba bridge.
It is the most action that the area, situated around the R61 on the Wild Coast, has seen in ages. Those in the queue at the village hall snicker and pass comments each time the sheep slips past the man in blue overalls trying to force it into his yard. It’s the only conversation for those who have queued all morning, some walking for three hours to get there.
The rest of the time is spent in silence, the only sound a gentle flicking of paper or a rustling of clothing to fan their faces. “Can you please check them again,” Nombuso Mtshulana, 42, asks a man in a leather jacket next to her in the queue, local UDM ward councillor Tembile Sbunge.
Pausing first to reflect on what to say, Sbunge speaks softly into the phone and then announces: “They’re done at the last village and are on their way here.” The queue murmurs and some smile. About 15 tense minutes later, his phone rings again.
“Just look out for a red car parked next to a gazebo with young men under it and turn left into the gravel road,” he says, getting up to open the hall doors.
The excited queuers are all there for a 5l bottle of paraffin given to indigent families by the Ingquza Hill local municipality, which has not yet connected them to the electricity grid. The paraffin, which they use for lighting and cooking, is supposed to last their families a month, but they say it lasts two weeks if they’re lucky.
They haven’t received this “monthly assistance” since before the first lockdown in March last year and it takes some time before the 98 paraffin bottles are unloaded in front of the hall. After a short discussion between Mtshulana, Sbunge and the truck driver, a list of beneficiaries is whipped out and Mtshulana calls out names. She finishes the list but not a single person has come forward. Then it dawns on her.
“But all the people on this list have electricity, why are they still getting paraffin?”
A heated discussion and a phone call to an administrator at the municipality reveals the list is outdated and does not feature the names of many in the queue, who now have to walk home without.
“We’ve become used to this disappointment because it is like this with everything else as well,” Mtshulana says of a municipality that struggles to provide the most basic of services. “You heard for yourself, they will only update the list next year. So, what should happen then? We will have to take to the street once again.”
The “street” Mtshulana speaks of is the R61, a 284km road that stretches from the edge of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela local municipality to the east through Ingquza Hill to Port St Johns local municipality and to the N2 in the west.
Aside from their world-famous scenic beauty and magnificent, desolate beaches, the three municipalities are also ANC strongholds, with four out of five voters casting their ballots for the governing party irrespective of how their councils perform.
Mtshulana is a member of the Lusikisiki/Ingquza Hill Crisis Committee, which has exposed corruption and mismanagement in the municipality. Its work prompted a forensic investigation by the provincial department of co-operative governance & traditional affairs, which confirmed its claims.
These included that local ANC councillors had subverted some of the villager’s choices when electing ward committees — a paying position in an area where unemployment is higher than 50% — and inserted their own people in a bid to buy patronage. Following the report, some changes were made, including the secondment of an acting municipal manager.
But these mean little to Mtshulana and her neighbours. They are also sceptical about the value of the Msikaba bridge that Ramaphosa and premier Oscar Mabuyane are coming to see. Msikaba bridge is one of two mega-bridges under construction in the area as part of the new N2 Wild Coast Road Project, a highway that will stretch the length of the Wild Coast from East London to Port Edward.
The other is at Mtentu, which will be the highest bridge in Africa and the longest of its kind in the world. In his address to residents and traditional leaders late last week, Ramaphosa said the R4bn project and the road would spur economic activity and lead to community development, service delivery and jobs for the rural folk on the Wild Coast. But Mtshulana asks: “If the government we have here has not been able to bring all of us in these villages water or electricity in so long, what will all this change?”
Ingquza Hill wasn’t always like this. In 2016/2017 it was a shining star, one of the few municipalities in the country to receive a clean audit from the auditor-general.
Three short years later, in the most recent report on local government finances, it received a disclaimer audit opinion, the worst outcome possible.
The sewage stench around the municipality’s seat at Flagstaff is as fetid as its books. Construction work on the R61 through town is the only sign of progress. Other roads are in such a state that to use them to miss the 20-minute wait caused by the roadworks is not an option, especially at night, when the streets, more pothole than road, are pitch-black. During the day you can see the craters filled with sewage or waste from homes and businesses.
The day before the politicians come to town, locals tell the Sunday Times that the presence of workers picking up litter is a sign that “someone important” is coming. “Otherwise they do not bother, and we no longer expect them to,” says a woman over her shoulder as she hurries out of the Boxer store.
Mayor Ntandokazi Capa, installed only last month after her predecessor died of Covid complications, admits that ratepayers have little confidence in the authorities. “Of course the issue of water is a thorny one. In Flagstaff we have been without water for almost six months, so we are really struggling,” she says.
She blames the parlous municipal finances on instability in the council, which is on its fourth CFO in five years and which has seen a mayor, municipal manager and a financial reporting manager dismissed amid allegations of financial misconduct since 2018.
Acting municipal manager Mawethu Pinyana adds to the list of problems, saying the council has failed to spend its municipal infrastructure grant from the National Treasury, has numerous middle management vacancies, submitted its financials late this year and is paying staff who don’t bother to come to work. “Administration here knew what the rules are but rather chose not to do the right things because there was no leadership to follow up,” he says.
Sbunge, a councillor since 2006, says: “It is difficult to try to convince businesses to pay rates because they have no reason to.
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"The governing party runs the council by using their numbers because whenever opposition councillors call for resolutions to investigate non-delivery and the disappearing budget, they drive the matter to the vote and it ends in them shooting such efforts down.”
For Mtshulana and fellow community activist Fundisile Thamsanqa, the ANC can forget about their votes. It’s a very different picture next door at the ANC-run Winnie Madikizela-Mandela local municipality, recently renamed for one of its best-known citizens. In bustling Bizana, most of the streets around the main road are tarred and well maintained. Access roads to a few villages on the outskirts of town have recently been tarred as well.
Formerly known as Mbizana, less than 10 years ago the council was on the brink of collapse, fraught with political instability and corruption and in receipt of a disclaimed audit opinion.
An intervention team seconded by former president Jacob Zuma in 2013 saw mayor Daniswa Mafumbatha deployed initially as council speaker from the district municipality, while municipal manager Luvuyo Mahlaka was sent from the provincial government. Seven years later, the municipality is celebrating its fifth consecutive unqualified audit finding, but it hasn’t forgotten where it comes from, Mafumbatha says.
“In those days we really struggled. I remember we initially ran this council with lawyers on standby because every decision we took was being challenged inside by people who had benefited from bad decisions,” she says.
“Political leadership had increased their salaries without any proper process and they did not want to pay this money back. In other cases, unqualified managers felt that because they had acted in these senior positions for years, they were entitled to those jobs and they took us to court.”
The impact of cleaner governance is starting to show: Bizana is busy with a number of projects, including the multimillion-rand refurbishment of the taxi rank, stadium and the new civic centre.
All this is set for completion by the end of the year. The council is also proud, Mahlaka says, that it has managed to increase the percentage of its self-generated revenue from 14% to more than 30% of its overall budget, relying less on the Treasury for handouts. Administratively, he says, the municipality has gone from being divided along political lines and having no permanent senior managers to having all senior vacancies filled with qualified staff who have been mostly trained internally over the past eight years.
“To appoint the first group of senior managers, I remember it took us three council meetings and four months in the high court,” he says. “The scariest thing from a financial perspective was that we had contracts that were worth R67m more than what we had in our budget and it took us two years to clear that and for our budget to balance. Our turnaround plan was premised on building a well-administered municipality and we all agreed on the principles and performance standards to achieve that.”
On the streets, residents say they are satisfied with the improvements, while one or two complain about disastrous property valuations. A hawker complains bitterly about being made to sell her wares next to the public toilets. On the other side of Ingquza Hill is Port St Johns, which is so poorly governed that the locals look to their more functional eastern neighbour with envy.
Port St Johns business owner Johannes Ferreira, 64, who runs Mountain View Inn on the R61, wishes he and his business fell under Ingquza Hill. He says his town has completely lost the plot. “In Port St Johns there’s no improvement,” he says.
On Heritage Day last week the town was busy as locals mingled with visitors who had come from as far as Johannesburg to enjoy the scenery and smoke the local dagga. While tourists kept largely to the restaurants in town and the various guesthouses and villas on the beach, the locals flocked to Second Beach on perilous roads pockmarked with large potholes, with the occasional cow wandering in from a nearby village.
The municipality’s just not concerned. There is no service delivery, nothing whatsoever
“In the 1980s, when I started coming here, Bulolo campsite at Second Beach was a beautiful place with chalets and a camping area. You had Mangrove and its beautiful chalets and campsites as well, but [now] there’s nothing left, it’s just bush,” Ferreira says. “The municipality’s just not concerned. There is no service delivery, nothing whatsoever.”
Driving through town you can see that the roads are almost totally destroyed in some areas, while buildings stand vacant.
Ferreira says years of maladministration have led to a rates dispute between ratepayers and the municipality. He is one of several businesspeople who have been handed over to attorneys for collection by the council despite not receiving a municipal account in more than eight years.
“We’re not managing to get a meeting with them to discuss this situation,” he says.
Other businesspeople speaking to the Sunday Times asked not to be named lest their criticism of the council affects their businesses. One, who operates on Second Beach, says: “Right now we do not have any sort of engagement with this council because they do not recognise the role we play as business. We are on our own, and it has been like that for years, and as a result we no longer have confidence in them.
“The only interaction we have with them is when they’re chasing us for rates for services they do not provide. Look now, Second Beach is full but no-one can use the toilets, and they are filthy.”
Another says: “We see the auditor-general reports about just how bad the administration is, but what we never get to hear is whether there are any consequences. Does the mayor or town manager even look to understand why things are being done in a certain way by employees?”
Chris Xangayi, a DA councillor in the OR Tambo district municipality, who was born and still lives in the town, blames the ANC and cadre deployment for the state of it. “It’s painful living under the current dispensation, and they’re taking the residents for granted here because rural people don’t complain a lot and accept things easily because they see that as loyalty to the ANC,” he says. “These cattle that you see in town during the day are also here at night, upending bins and causing a huge mess.
“The biggest issue over the years has been infighting between factions in the ANC, and that has also affected us in the district council. Port St Johns used to be clean and well looked after; in fact, it was the glory town of the Wild Coast and visitors from as far as the UK and US used to come here. “Those entrusted with power have stolen the dream that democracy carried.”
HOW THEY VOTED IN 2016
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela
- ANC: 80.51%
- EFF: 6.2%
- Academic Congress Union: 4.02%
Ingquza Hill
- ANC: 83.49%
- EFF: 5.8%
- DA: 3.52%
Port St Johns
- ANC: 79.46%
- Civic Independent: 6.43%
- DA: 5.7%
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