Dale > Standing in the village of Hakonyane, just an hour's drive south of the capital, Maseru, one can see the green fields of South Africa, about one kilometre away.
It seems they can't see quite far enough?
nytimes.com
>>Sending what some call an ominous signal to this nation's leaders, South Africa's sprawling shantytowns have begun to erupt, sometimes violently, in protest over the government's inability to deliver the better life that the end of apartheid seemed to herald a dozen years ago.
Since 1994, South Africa's government has built and largely given away 1.8 million basic houses, usually 16 feet by 20 feet, often to former shantytown dwellers. More than 10 million have gained access to clean water, and countless others have been connected to electrical lines or basic sanitation facilities.
Yet at the same time, researchers say, rising poverty has caused 2 million to lose their homes and 10 million more to have their water or power cut off because of unpaid bills. And the number of shanty dwellers has grown by as much as 50 percent, to 12.5 million people - more than one in four South Africans, many living in a level of squalor that would render most observers from the developed world speechless.
Unemployment, estimated at 26 percent in 1994, has soared to roughly 40 percent many analysts say; the government, which does not count those who have stopped looking for work, says joblessness is lower. Big industries like mining and textiles have laid off manual laborers, and expanding businesses like banking and retailing have failed to pick up the slack. Many of the jobless have moved to the slums.
Incompetence and greed are rife. In Ehlanzeni, a district of nearly a million people in Mpumalanga Province, 3 out of 4 residents have no trash collection, 6 out of 10 have no sanitation and 1 in 3 lack water - and the city manager makes more than Mr. Mbeki's $180,000 annual salary***.<<
That's equivalent to R1,150,000 and in Johannesburg it's even higher.
Merry Christmas. |
