Behind the political posturing and defensiveness are people with genuine unfilled needs

ANC Youth League march in Cape Town, 27 August 2012. Photo by Nathan Geffen.

Nathan Geffen

29 August 2012

None of the big political parties are showing the kind of leadership that is needed when it comes to housing.

On Monday between one and two thousand people took part in the ANC Youth League’s march from Salt River to the Western Cape provincial government. One of them was 21 year old Zansile Manqamane. He lives in a shack with six other people in the informal settlement of Barcelona, Gugulethu. He has been living there for eight years. He came to Cape Town from a town near Mthatha in the Eastern Cape. For the last six years his family has been on a waiting list for an RDP house. He works at Gugulethu Square as a packer for a large retailer but sacrificed his income for the day to take part in the march. Why? Because he wants his family to have a house.

Manqamane didn’t strike me as a political ideologue or even dogmatic. He’s a young man who works a low-paying blue collar job. In our brief interview, he was likeable and engaging but also desperate. He said that both the national and provincial governments were responsible for the housing shortage, but he lives in the Western Cape and holds this government mainly responsible. He says he voted for better houses. When I asked him why it is taking so long for his family to get an RDP house, he replied, “I have no idea what the problem is.”

Manqamane said he’s a member of the Youth League but didn’t show a martyr’s devotion to the organisation or a visceral hatred for the premier, whom he referred to respectfully. He’s not a thug or the stereotyped image of a Youth League supporter. He’s a person with a genuine unfilled need and he wants the state to deliver. The reality is that neither the National nor the Western Cape governments have provided a house for his family nor have either explained to him why the delay, what the obstacles are and what’s to be done about it in the meanwhile. There is also no civil society organisation that is doing for houses what the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) did for HIV. So it is surely quite natural that Manqamane turns to the Youth League, who are making demands that resonate with him. No one in South Africa can honestly claim to have a solution to the housing shortage, but much more can be done to speed up the building of decent houses and ensure that in the meanwhile informal settlements have better access to decent toilets, clean water, electricity and cleaning services.

I followed Monday’s march in my GroundUp capacity. Here are a few observations about the march and its aftermath.

Geffen is the GroundUp editor.