President Cyril Ramaphosa finally made it to Hammanskraal, scene of the devastating cholera outbreak. After a detour that took him to Abuja in Nigeria and Ankara, the Turkish capital, he arrived this week in the township — a stone’s throw from his office in the Union Buildings — to commiserate with residents. Better late than never, I guess.
Hammanskraal becomes another in the list of place names — Dimbaza, Marikana, and so on — that have gained notoriety as sites where government action or inaction resulted in needless loss of life. It's simply unforgivable that government negligence — failure to supply safe water — leads to people dying of a preventable disease. It is also outrageous that the president appeared to fail to see the gravity of the crisis, treating it almost as if it was the least of his priorities. He seems to have decided to go to Hammanskraal only after finishing off everything else in his in-basket.
Two Sundays ago — by that time almost 20 people had already been reported dead — radio stations were reporting that Ramaphosa was due in Hammanskraal that afternoon. However, in the evening TV cameras caught a smiling Ramaphosa arriving in Abuja for the inauguration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the septuagenarian who's cheated his way to power. Before the week was out, he was off again — this time to Türkiye for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s inauguration. Only this week, with nothing more to do I guess, did it occur to him to hop across to Hammanskraal.
Innocent people have lost their lives, but in keeping with past practices, not a soul will lose their job, salaries or even their sleep over this calamity
Nobody is suggesting he should not honour these engagements. They're important. He has to be seen after all. But a leader’s priorities can be determined by how and where they spend their time. He probably didn't attach too much importance to these cholera deaths, or he didn't want to draw attention to the issue. But this is a president who's never hesitated to dump everything and head home at the slightest whiff of a crisis.
He had hardly got his feet under the presidential desk a few years ago when he had to rush home from the Commonwealth summit because faction fighting within his party had literally set Mahikeng on fire. And all that an all-day meeting behind closed doors achieved was a decision to hold another meeting. In December 2019 he left an AU summit in Egypt in a hurry after load-shedding was ramped up to stage 8, held a perfunctory meeting with Eskom bigwigs and thereafter promised the country there would be no blackouts during the festive season. That turned out not to be true. He's a firefighter, it seems, who never puts out the fire. He rushes in simply to goggle or gape at the inferno.
But Hammanskraal was different to the other emergencies. The house was already burning — people were dying, killed by his government's ineptitude — when he decided to go on what was essentially a jaunt. His presence was not crucial to the success of those gatherings. He would not have been missed, or his absence noticed.
Ramaphosa's aides will probably regard this as making a mountain out of a molehill, and many would concur. But this country has gone through so much pain that many of us have become inured to human suffering, especially when it does not directly affect us. The ANC often boasts that it represents and articulates the aspirations of the poor; and yet, more often than not, it is the poor who pay — sometimes with their lives, as in this case — for the party's negligence.
Ramaphosa may have been a month late in visiting Hammanskraal, but at least this time he had the foresight not to use the train. Otherwise he wouldn't have made it to his destination. The last time he tried to be Mr Everyman he was stranded on a train for four hours, the result of yet another of his government’s many disasters.
He sort of apologised to the people of Hammanskraal but somehow blamed others for their misfortune. What he didn't say is what was to be done about those responsible for this man-made crisis. Innocent people have lost their lives, but in keeping with past practice, not a soul will lose their job, salary or even a wink of sleep over this calamity. We simply move on to the next outrage.
When Ramaphosa tried to advise residents to boil their water before use, they were quick to remind him of load-shedding, another of his government's success stories. And they would be forgiven for not believing his tall tales. Nobody should have been surprised at the cholera outbreak; people in Hammanskraal and other areas have been complaining for years about lack of access to clean water.
Their misfortune is not unique — pleas for help ignored, or tenders given to connected comrades who take the money but never do the job. In Giyani for instance, contracts worth billions were awarded to comrades but villagers are still without water, a monument to Nomvula Mokonyane, the minister responsible at the time, who's now ensconced in a senior position at Luthuli House. It's not simply the fact that transgressions are committed, but that wrongdoers are never held to account. There are no consequences.
The disease has been reported in other provinces as well. A report released this week by the department of water & sanitation showed that at least 50% of water provided by municipalities was unfit for human consumption. Faecal contamination has been found in most of the country’s rivers and dams.
It’s an emergency. Hammanskraal is a red flag. Something drastic needs to be done, and quickly. Or the country could soon find itself sitting on a waterborne time bomb.
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