Poverty in the townships and rural areas
DEPUTY President Cyril Ramaphosa says he has been overwhelmed by the poverty in townships and rural areas while campaigning ahead of the local government elections.
“I’ve often asked myself as we were involved in this campaign‚ you go to townships and rural areas‚ and‚ in the main‚ wherever one goes you just have a sense of poverty. You feel the poverty‚ you smell it‚ you touch it and you are completely surrounded by it‚” he said.
Ramaphosa was addressing professionals and senior public servants deployed in local government at the University of KwaZulu-Natal on Wednesday evening.
He said poverty was “an overwhelming type of experience” that those in power encounter.
“And the question often comes to mind: why is this like this? And sometimes when one flies these days‚ because one is deputy president you are flown by a military helicopter and the President is also subjected to that‚ as you fly you often see the living areas of our people. You see poverty from the air‚ you feel poverty‚” he said.
Ramaphosa said in 1994 the ANC government inherited “a fragmented and unaccountable system” particularly organised to serve the apartheid state.
He said great strides had been made in uniting South Africans‚ but there were still challenges in building an all-inclusive and embracing local government structure.
“Local government is the sphere in which the communities have direct contact with government. Therefore‚ our communities must have a say in who leads them‚ how they are led and what developments must take place in their areas. Ours is a vision of a local government that works with communities to meet their social and economic needs‚” he said.
He praised the KwaZulu-Natal government for coming up with the Operation Sukuma Sakhe (stand up and build) programme — a call for people to overcome the issues destroying communities such as poverty‚ unemployment‚ crime‚ substance abuse‚ HIV and tuberculosis.
He said the success of the initiative would result in it being rolled out in other provinces.
“I am at the forefront of popularising what KwaZulu-Natal has done‚ tried and tested because it has been found to be the best method of government. Even the President felt so much in love with it and wants to publicise it all over.” Ramaphosa said now that SA had achieved democracy‚ it was time to focus on the economic development of the country.
“It is at the economic level that we can be able to fully transform the lives of our people. And we seek municipalities whose central purpose will be to change the economic trajectory of areas where our people live.
“They should focus on economic development and job creation. Once the social infrastructure is built‚ that should also be accompanied by economic development. We want municipalities that … will work with each other and other spheres of government as dynamic agents of our national development plan. We want municipalities that will craft effective plans that talk to how they are going to move economic development to their own areas‚” said Ramaphosa.
He urged professionals to play a role in Sukuma Sakhe programmes in their areas and to come with their own thoughts‚ ideas and proposals, “because government will listen to you”.
“We need everybody’s brain power to crank our economy back into life. We value the time and opportunity to interact with professionals. Not so much because we want you to vote for the ANC‚ because we take that for granted anyway. But much more because professionals‚ intellectuals and people who are in leadership positions in various formations are the brains trust of the nation‚” he said.
TMG Digital