By SIKHO NTSHOBANE and SINO MAJANGAZA
Rural Eastern Cape resident Nosiphumeze Mkhathazi was just a six-year-old girl when the new democratic government came into power in 1994, bringing with it hopes of a better life for millions of citizens, including villagers like her.
Like so many rural areas in the country that had been neglected by the apartheid regime, her village of Makoti, near Ntabankulu, lacked essential services like tap water, electricity, toilets, roads, clinics and schools.
Fast forward 22 years later, and nothing has changed for her and hundreds of villagers from Makoti, which falls under Mhlontlo local municipality.
Most villagers still stay in mud houses, have to collect firewood from forests to cook and draw water from rivers, which they share with animals. There is no gravel road leading in to the village, which is at the bottom of a steep hill, forcing residents to climb to the top where they have to hitch lifts to get to hospital or town.
The only thing that connects them to other villages – and the rest of the world – is the winding footpath up the hill.
The 28-year-old mother of two said sick people had to be strapped to an old mattress with rope and carried up the path to the gravel road at the top to get to an ambulance.
“Life is tough here,” she said when the Daily Dispatch visited her village recently.
Eastern Cape health spokesman Siyanda Manana reacted with shock that there were still areas inaccessible by road. Mangqangqa Ngcwangule, a 70-year-old pensioner, who suffers from TB and regularly visits Siphethu Hospital, after growing tired of climbing up the hill to catch a taxi, found a site on top of the hill where he erected a shack.
“I come and sleep here because the road is just next door,” he said.
Next to Makoti is Ndakana village, where villagers are also forced to draw water from dongas and dirty streams. There is also no electricity.
A Dispatch team found 21-year-old Bukeka Mgwiji cooking food outside.
She stays with her grandmother and siblings while her mother works as a hawker in KwaBhaca (Mount Frere).
“Living in a rural village is painful. It’s a risk to go to the forest because you are there alone sometimes,” she said.
Mkhathazi said in Makoti too, they had to suffer the indignity of having to answer nature’s call in open fields and nearby bushes.
Mhlontlo municipal spokesman Sisa Mpehle said the infrastructural challenges were countrywide and not just limited to Mhlontlo.
“We would like to fix all these problems by tomorrow but we don’t have resources.” — sikhon@dispatch.co.za