Time to get serious about Alex
Do you know what conditions are like in Alexandra?
I am sometimes amazed at how little the ‘madams’ in Sandton know about living conditions in Alexandra. It is one of Johannesburg’s oldest townships and I remember serving on the Interim Crisis Committee’s funds management working group in the 90s when Alexandra was in uproar.
One section was so bombed out by police violence, warring ANC versus IFP factions, and petrol bombings that it was euphemistically branded ‘Beirut’. Today Alexandra is a different place in many respects. The glistening Pan-African Mall towers over the entrance to Alexandra near Louis Botha Avenue. London Road has been upgraded as a main thoroughfare and in the early 2000s, after an investigation by DA councillors, a second bulk water pipe was installed to create security of water supply when a pipe bursts.
All streets are now paved or tarred, and the East Bank area has been developed since the building of the All Africa Games Tsutsumani Village in 1999 and the opening of the Marlboro Gautrain Station. So to tut-tut about ‘dirt roads’ in Alex is simply not true. However, that’s where the improvement ends. The West Bank wards of Alexandra are in an unbelievable mess for which the ANC-run city council must take a huge slice of responsibility.
The Alexandra Renewal Project has stalled badly. Residents have to deal on a daily basis with a rat problem that beggars belief. I visit Alexandra about once a week and every time have to step over a dead rat or two, some the size of small cats or kittens. Most of the hundreds of chemical portaloos have long ago ceased functioning and have now become unhygienic bucket-system toilets.
One journalist I took to view them was so revolted that she wouldn’t approach close enough to look inside one of them. Children play in raw sewage spills on a daily basis. Builder’s rubble and uncollected garbage lies on every pavement. I wonder constantly when we will have excrement thrown on the steps of City Hall as we have seen in other cities. The City of Johannesburg is a world class African mess and it’s time to get serious about the shacks of Alexandra.
