Anatomy of Poverty

from the Independent On Line

A little history and a little review on South Africa. Showing how expectations on lives improving after the fall of apartheid have fallen short. - Kale

Johannesburg - When they talk of their government's failure, South Africans in the tangle of shacks and narrow lanes that is Alexandra point to an unfinished modern brick and steel building near the edge of the township.

The billboard out front says the Mandela Interpretation Centre should have been completed two years ago.

Neighbors gossip that corrupt officials stole money for the centre.

Julian Baskin, director of a government project to redevelop Alexandra, says the real story is that only R4-million (US$525 000) was set aside four years ago for a museum that has since grown to include space for cultural and social activities.

Now the project is stalled as bureaucrats try to determine the real costs and how to pay for them.

The project is in many ways a metaphor for South Africa: Expectations ballooning beyond budgets, over-optimistic planning and, yes, corruption have combined to slow delivery of the "better life for all" the African National Congress promised during the campaign for South Africa's first all-race election 14 years ago.

Impatience with successive ANC governments since also has fed anger against immigrants who have crowded along with South Africans into Alexandra and other poorest of the poor neighbourhoods.

"We don't have houses, we don't have jobs, we don't have anything," said Cyril Mthembu, a 42-year-old unemployed father of three who has lived in Alexandra for 28 years.

"So, we are fighting over the little we have."

Transformation

Seven years ago, President Thabo Mbeki launched an ambitious program to transform Alexandra, a squalid square mile (2 1/2 square kilometres) just across a highway from some of the most expensive homes and shops in Johannesburg.

Originally, the budget was estimated at R1,3-billion.

Baskin thinks the final bill will be nearly triple that. The project is due to be completed in two years.

Trees have been planted, schools, clinics and police stations renovated.

Baskin said much of what's been done so far is hard to see - new sewer systems, reservoirs and other infrastructure that will make new homes possible.

Homes have been built for some 10 000 households, but Baskin acknowledged "there are huge numbers of people still living in shacks," and that two more years won't be nearly enough to address all Alexandra's issues.

Baskin and his staff of about 30 ran into problems quickly.

For instance, courts have said that until legal wrangles over land ownership are settled, they can't touch the homes of some of Alexandra's oldest residents, the inhabitants of the neighbourhood's original 6 000 houses.

Those older residents, many living in dilapidated homes, have watched shack-dwelling neighbours move to new houses and apartments - taking with them rent they once paid for backyard shacks.

Mbeki is credited with spurring growth in South Africa with free market policies, but the boom has yet to trickle down.

Unemployment is more than 20 percent, and now a downturn due in part to rising global food and fuel prices - and a dire electricity shortage resulting from poor government planning - will make it even harder to deliver.

After several years of growth of about 5 percent, the International Monetary Fund predicts growth this year for South Africa at just 3,8 percent, and cautions even that may be too optimistic.

Promises

When apartheid ended in 1994, Mbeki's African National Congress estimated it needed 3 million homes.

Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu told parliament earlier this year 2.6 million homes had been built since 1994. But with population growth, migration to the cities and other factors, the housing backlog stands at 2.1 million.

Sisulu's department has said it needs to double the rate at which it is delivering homes if it is to reach the goal of ensuring all South Africans - native and newly arrived - have adequate housing by 2024.

But the department acknowledges it lacks technical and management skills and that it has been plagued by supply shortages and poor construction.

The frustration among poor blacks has played out in attacks against foreigners, who often end up in squatter camps in Alexandra and elsewhere.

South Africa draws immigrants from war-torn Somalia, from Zimbabwe with its political and economic chaos and from Nigeria, where corruption and military rule have blocked growth.

The anger has also led to riots over the lack of electricity and running water, and complaints that the houses the government has managed to build are shoddy.

Some progress has been made - more South Africans have access to running water, electricity and toilets, for example, according to census studies.

But the gains have been slow, and Stephen Gelb, an economist at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand, said the focus on simply improving conditions in a nation where more than half the population is poor addresses only part of the problem.

Education can give the poor a chance to improve their own lives, Gelb said.

But in South Africa, most blacks are the product of an apartheid system meant to ensure they did not gain the skills to compete with whites, with black schools underequipped and staffed with teachers who in some cases had not finished school themselves.

The post-apartheid government has not done enough to reverse that legacy, Gelb said.

"What people are looking for is not a handout, but something that points the way to the future," Gelb said.

Link to full article. May expire in future.