http://www.timeslive.co.za/specialreports/elections2011/article973469.ece/Tell-me-why-I-should-vote

‘Tell me why I should vote?’
Eastern Cape villagers in despair about their future
Mar 17, 2011 10:51 PM | By SIPHO MASONDO

He is a far cry from the man that was first in the queue in the country’s first democratic election on April 27 1994.

Forcibly removed from Coega in 1979 and “dumped” in Glenmore about 30km off the N2, near Peddie, in Eastern Cape, Mafani, 60, says the area has not changed and is still as much a “civic prison” as it was 32 years ago.

With successive post-apartheid governments failing Glenmore, Mafani says voting in the upcoming local government elections will be a waste of time.

“Tell me why I should vote? I voted with such excitement in 1994, thinking that finally a government for the people, by the people, will give us hope. But now it’s 2011 and we are still wasting away.

“Jacob Zuma doesn’t know us, Thabo Mbeki didn’t know us, former premiers Ray Mhlaba, Makhenkesi Stofile, Nosimo Balindlela and Noxolo Kiviet don’t know us.

“No MEC has ever been here.”

In 1979, police, on the orders of the Department of Co-operation and Development, forcibly removed residents of Coega, Colchester, Klipfontein, Kenton-on-Sea, Alexandria, Greenbushes and Kinkelbos in Eastern Cape and trucked them to Glenmore, in the former Ciskei, on the banks of the Fish River.

Within a few months,cattle died after eating poisonous plants and more than 23 children died of disease and malnutrition.

In 1984, Mafani said, a tornado and a severe thunderstorm swept across Glenmore, killing about 140 people, including his wife, Mavis, and two children.

The people of Glenmore, who had been booted out of South Africa, were also not wanted in Ciskei, which was under the leadership of Lennox Sebe.

“Lennox went to Pretoria and told apartheid leaders that he didn’t want us on his land. They softened him by giving him R45-million to develop the area. But that money disappeared,” Mafani said.

“The apartheid government later removed us from the banks of the river to where we are now, a kilometre away.”

Thirty years down the line, Mafani and his 15000 neighbours still live in dire poverty.

Most of the low-cost houses built by the apartheid regime have two rooms – a kitchen that doubles as a living room, and a bedroom.

The only health facility in the area is a makeshift clinic, with three nurses and no doctor.

Said nurse Joyce Ntutu: “There are no ambulances and the people struggle. They have to hire cars but people don’t work. It takes more than 24 hours for an ambulance to arrive here.”

Mafani said there are no libraries or sports centres.

“Matriculants are as illiterate as people who have never been to school. How on earth are they ever going to get jobs?” he asks.

Mafani, whose furniture-less living room – decorated with newspaper clippings of stories written about Glenmore – says justice will be served only when the people are relocated to a new area “that will help them forget their past”.

But Vuyisile Lloyd, who was a teenager when his family was moved to Glenmore from Coega, has lost hope.

“It appears to me that we will die here. We will die a slow, sad, lonely and painful death,” he said.