Hotline to Zuma

Fiveteen years after apartheid ended the lives of many South Africans have not improved. During the summer, the poor of the country took to the streets in violent protest over the lack of basic services.

Reacting to the protest, recently elected President Jacob Zuma has started a hot line to his office. The purpose of the hot line is so people can complain about the lack of water or electricity or any thing else.

From Reuters Alert Net, we read more about Zuma's efforts to reach out to the rioters.

Zuma, who took office in May, has pledged to do more for the poor, but financial woes in Africa's biggest economy have limited his ability to carry out the main plank of his party's election manifesto.

"You may receive calls from very angry people," Zuma, who took calls himself as the hotline opened, told call centre staff.

"They will say there's no water, there's no electricity," Zuma was quoted by government news agency BuaNews as saying.

Vusi Mona, head of communications in the president's office, said 2,420 calls to the toll-free number were being handled each hour.

The hidden white poverty in South Africa

from the BBC

The BBC has picked up on the story of white poverty in South Africa. Attention has been drawn to the subject by the ANC president Jacob Zuma. - Kale

by Peter Biles

Karel and Annetjie du Randt moved to the Bethlehem settlement in Pretoria West five years ago after falling on hard times.

Previously, Mr du Randt had been employed, making tombstones in the town of Rustenburg.

The du Randts' home today is a tiny wooden hut on a private plot of land where about 30 whites make up the small community.

The huts have no electricity or individual toilets, but there is a spacious garden where the residents can grow and sell vegetables.

"We try to help each other", says Mr du Randt.

"We're not just sitting around and crying. Most of the guys here don't have any income, but we're just starting a new project, making small folding tables. You have to be part of the set-up here, in order to survive."

Bethlehem is not nearly as crowded or as impoverished as South Africa's teeming black townships such as Khayelitsha in Cape Town, or Diepsloot in Johannesburg.

However, Bethlehem reflects the face of South African society that is rarely seen - white poverty.

"It's a huge problem, and I don't think people realise how bad it is," says Elsabe Blignaut of the Danville Help Project which assists poor white Afrikaners.

"People are homeless. They have no jobs. They don't earn anything. We try to get them off the streets, feed and clothe them, and make life better for them".

Privileges of apartheid

In the days of apartheid, impoverished white Afrikaners were amply protected by the state.

The National Party which came to power in 1948 on a wave of Afrikaner nationalism, guaranteed Afrikaans-speaking South Africans employment, subsidised housing and state benefits.

Today, the ANC government provides a safety net of social grants and basic services for all South Africans who need them, but Afrikaners have lost the privileges they once enjoyed.

The mainly white Solidarity trade union says South Africa must accept that poverty is not only a "black" problem.

"Although poverty is less prevalent in the white communities, there is an alarming increase amongst white South Africans," concludes a Solidarity report that has been handed to ANC President Jacob Zuma.

Mr Zuma went to the Bethlehem settlement earlier this year, and promised to return.

His second visit last week, brought South Africa's presidential hopeful face-to-face with the daily problems of poor whites.

Accompanying him was Minister of Social Development Zola Skweyiya, who told the residents that in return for government assistance, they must make available whatever skills they can offer.

South Africa has a major shortage of skilled workers.

Link to full article. May expire in future.

A follow up on Zuma's meeting with white South African's

from AFP via Google

You might remember yesterday's post that previewed Zuma's meet. Now we have details what happened on the visit. - Kale

PRETORIA — Jacob Zuma, leader of South Africa's ruling ANC party, promised Thursday to break the silence on white poverty as he met Afrikaans residents of a township living without running water or electrity.

Zuma, favourite to become only the third black president of South Africa at elections next year, said he had been shocked and embarrassed by the plight of the residents of Bethlehem, situated on the outskirts of the capital Pretoria.

"I am shocked and surprised by what I have seen here," said Zuma.

"The vast number of black poverty does not mean that we must ignore white poverty which is increasingly becoming an embarrassment to talk about."

Although the level of unemployment among the country's more than four million whites is only around a fifth of the overall jobless rate, research says the numbers of them living in poverty are growing.

The trade union Solidarity, whose membership is mainly Afrikaans, handed Zuma a report which claimed that unemployment among whites was increasing by nearly double that of the national average.

The visit by Zuma to Bethlehem -- his second this year -- is seen as highly symbolic given resentment among sectors of the white community that President Thabo Mbeki's government has done little to address their plight.

As well as residents of the trailer homes in Bethlehem, other whites living nearby came to tell Zuma about their daily struggle at a time of rising food and fuel prices.

"Most of us feel like outcasts and we cause embarrassment to our fellow whites," said Maritjie Vos who lives with her two adult children and four other families in a three-bedroom house.

"Zuma has been the first leader to come down here to listen to our problems."

Bethlehem resident Nico Vosloo, who looks older than his 43 years, said the Afrikaans community often felt they had no one to turn to.

"Zuma must push for a law to allow destitute people like us to access basic income grant," said Vosloo.

"We cannot wait until we are 65 years to access the old age grant. I have never worked for the past 17 years. How am I supposed to survive?"

Solidarity general secretary Flip Buys welcomed Zuma's visit as an acknowledgement that poverty did not only affect the majority black population.

"For a long time whites have been seen as rich and blacks poor. Talking about white poverty has been seen as politically incorrect," said Buys.

"The emergence of this scourge has left everyone looking for answers."

Link to full article. May expire in future.