Gauteng Social Development MEC, Faith Mazibuko, has taken a bold step many of her ANC colleagues and government officials dread to take.
With food parcels in one hand and government services in the other, she paid a visit to various hostels in Alexandra to bring services to the once neglected community, a move that has earned her the respect of hostel residents.
They have applauded her for realising that being a hostel resident does not demean or reduce one to a lesser human being. They also require government services and assistance, just like any other person anywhere in South Africa.
For years, the government has been dishing out food parcels to perceived ANC supporters outside hostels in Alexandra and never has the same help been extended to residents in the hostels.
Addressing the residents after her tour of the KwaNobuhle Hostel, Mazibuko told them that government would do all in its power to deliver services to the hostel community. “You’re just as good as other citizens of Alexandra and you, too, deserve to get government assistance just like anyone else,” she told the residents.
But what is sad is that it has taken the government more than 20 years to realise this simple fact, that they are a government of all people, regardless of their party membership. The ANC-led government is not just a government of ANC members or those they perceive to have voted for them. Otherwise, they are no different from the apartheid regime which was a government for whites only.
The underlying principle of winning elections is that once you have been declared a winner, you’re not just a winner to those who elected you. Even your sworn enemy suddenly becomes your burden and should be treated in the same fashion and manner as your own kith and kin in the ANC.
Hostel residents are known to belong to the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and for years have been marginalised because of their political affiliation. It took the erstwhile Gauteng IFP leader, Bonginkosi Dhlamini’s brinkmanship to persuade the MEC to take the dreaded step and venture to see for herself the level of poverty, deprivation and suffering that obtains inside the walls of those hostels.
Mazibuko even said in her own words to the media that she was ‘horrified’ by what she discovered. “This was an eye- opener,” she said after meeting numerous disabled people inside the hostels who are living in squalor and only have one meal per day.
