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Disillusioned South Africans mark Freedom Day

“Welcome to Hell”… That’s how residents here describe their living conditions.

Celebrating the country’s 17th year of democracy, President Jacob Zuma said this day marks the restoration of human dignity.

But in communities across the country people are holding what they call un-Freedom Day commemorations, highlighting the failures of the regime which toppled the Apartheid system.

The community’s ire is raised by reports that President Jacob Zuma’s home is to undergo renovations amounting to millions of dollars. Meanwhile, in this section of the Cape Town township of Khayelitsha some three-thousand people are forced to share six working taps for clean water. And there’s not a single toilet.

In barely three weeks South Africans will go to the polls to vote for councils and local governments. But this community says even their votes have failed to bring any form of delivery. They now want a boycott of the polls…

Candles lit for the hundreds of people killed in shack fires in South Africa every year. This woman, a victim herself, lost her child in one such blaze. Had the government provided electricity, she would still have been alive.

There is a purpose behind every action here. Even the community’s coming out here in this tent in the middle of this impoverished community today, a sign to show their dissatisfaction with a system they believe has failed them.