By Phakamisa Mayaba
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s recent Cabinet Oversight Visit to the Northern Cape may have come across as a rehash of established setbacks from two years ago. Forgive us if this smacks of resentful criticism from someone with an axe to grind against the seventh administration — instead, let’s recall his imbizo in this very province in 2022.
Speaking in Upington’s Mxolisi Dicky Jacobs Stadium (and eParkeni reported on it back then), he assured those present that his government would ‘not leave anyone behind’. Barbara Creecy, then minister of Environmental Affairs Forestry and Fisheries, who formed part of his delegation, said the province had ‘greater potential to generate electricity than anywhere else in the country’.
These sentiments were echoed in Ramaphosa’s 2024 State of the Nation Address: ‘Almost R200bn has been invested in our renewable programme and 64% of that has come here in the Northern Cape. Already, we are seeing quite a lot of job creation.’ The province’s premier, Dr Zamani Saul, said the same things in his state of the province address a year earlier.
Among the key issues during the recent stopover was to put the province in the forefront of the green energy revolution, particularly solar as well as green hydrogen. Unemployment, service delivery and improving our municipalities crept up once more.
Needless to say, back in 2022, the phones and WhatsApps were wildly going off here at our lowly rag. ‘The President is on his way to the NC, all hands on deck!’ Could we find a correspondent out there — someone, anyone?
Because a visit by the First Citizen to a province that isn’t really priority number one on the national list, our reporters – often pressed for data and airtime – did their best; carefully followed-up on the press releases, news clips and government social media pages.
This year’s visit, described as a ‘presidential engagement’ between national and provincial leaders, was held at Sol Plaatje University in Kimberley. The president was again accompanied by various ministers, deputy ministers and senior government officials, and he spoke to the media afterwards, declaring the Northern Cape a ‘province on the move’.
But even the SABC correspondent began to realise that the people weren’t quite sold on the whole thing. Reported Tebogo Msimanga: ‘Most people on the ground, they’re saying the intervention by President Cyril Ramaphosa coming to Northern Cape, they don’t see anything that will be done, because their argument is that this is not the first visit by officials from national [government]. They are not optimistic that after this visit things will change.’
One local publication simply took to publishing a piece that read more like a press release. Whether this indicates the death of journalism – both in the province and elsewhere — or the more worrisome death of civic political engagement is neither here nor there.
But what is abundantly clear is that this vacuum of simmering apathy has seen more individuals turning to the promise of community-driven projects. A vukuzenzele spirit centred on self-actualisation, and the dismaying realisation that nobody is coming to save you. Over the years, knitting co-ops have developed from small living rooms. There are also agricultural co-ops, catering gigs operating from personal kitchens, and the ever-resilient stokvels. More so in the areas of tourism, cultural and heritage initiatives, it is locals themselves who are pooling money together to print banners, bake cakes and send out raffles for fundraising, or to hand out clothes to the less fortunate.
All across the province, there’s an ever-growing outcrop of NGOs. Ready examples would be the Karoo Development Foundation – which we’ve written much about – based in nearby Phillippolis, as well as the South African Society for Cultural History. There is the Foundation for Alcohol Related Research, Partners in Sexual Health, and Second Chances, all doing invaluable work.
Our intrepid colleague Destine Nde has documented the work of Revive Willowmore, a group of tannies working towards the betterment of this Klein Karoo town. In many ways, it is the spirit of the ‘concerned resident’ that has seen the coming to life of such efforts, effecting change and fighting against the scourges.
To outsiders, the Northern Cape comes across as a dustbowl of economic disopportunity, with a smattering of mainly poor people and lots – as in, lots – of grazing land for its abundant tally of sheep. Though partly accurate, this assessment ignores the slow-blooming promise the province had once held, and the potential it has yet to make good on in the future.
Members of a certain generation will remember it as a bohemian getaway, a geographic heir to the simplicity of an easy-going life, unmesmerised by the trappings of glitz and modern refinements. They’ll speak fondly of the hearty, home-like meals in restaurants, the trinkets one could pick up at forlorn padstalletjies in the middle of nowhere, or the musicians who sometimes played folk liedjies among the tumbleweeds on dusty roads.
Mostly, though, they’ll weep over the rustic railway towns with the uniform homes with the high red concrete stoeps from where you could view the goods or passenger train chugging into town. Or the workers in heavy boots and greasy overalls, swinging tin lunchboxes, coming home from another day’s grind. The kids running to meet them as the wives or live-in partners got the Welcome Dover stove going, and the wisps of smoke rising from the chimney and melting into the expansive grey skies.
Herman Lategan’s piece in the now defunct Vrye Weekblad about the deterioration of Springfontein barely 100 kilometres from Colesberg is likely to get you commiserating deeply. That is not to suggest that those times were bucolic. Not by any stretch. Not with the usual litany of bucket toilets, unelectrified homes, unemployment, and all those other sufferings this writer has touched on ad nauseam. Over the years, homes have been built, schools erected, social grants and education bursaries dispursed. And yes, money – lots of it – has disappeared into the palms and bank accounts of those who were close enough to power to figure out the loopholes.
During his latest oversight visit, Ramaphosa touched on the failing municipalities that produce horrendous audits year on year — specifically, only three of the province’s municipalities received clean audits in the 2022/3 Auditor-General’s Report. These may seem like just numbers, but on the street they translate into real lives with real, immediate problems. ‘Inefficient service delivery’ means long queues at the clinic, effluent flowing through the streets, and no water in the taps. ‘Irregular expenditure’ (R3.67 billion, according to the 2023/4 Auditor-General’s report) manifested in failing infrastructure, widening inequality and a defeatism that puts money in the tavern owner’s pocket and fosters a bulging prison population.
This is not to suggest that all is lost. A new mining phased has rejuvenated once sleepy towns with backwater sensibilities like Kathu and Kuruman, turning them into burgeoning capitalist outposts with flashy cars in the driveways and educated kids. There are new restaurants, jewelry stores, golf courses, and long-limbed women walking the streets: the tell-tale signs of development and capitalist exploitation.
Nearby, the wind turbine project in Noupoort has been a godsend. Small miracles here and there, not enough to culminate in an economic boom, but enough to say not all is lost. And there a few more homeboys with a job.
It was hinted that I should do a write-up on Ramaphosa’s trek down here. Few days at it, and it felt like I was repeating what I’d written two years ago. I guess great statesmen and nondescript writers sometimes face similar problems.
FEATURED IMAGE: Kimberley, the capital of Northern Cape province which played host to President Ramaphosa’s latest ‘provincial engagement’, with its ubiquitous ‘big hole’. (Wikimedia Commons)