On Sunday morning it was drizzling lightly when I set out to buy newspapers, the kind you hold in your hands. My car nosed into Soshanguve township, 40 minutes north of the Pretoria central business district, headed to a petrol station that still stocks the papers.
We were driving down the main road (the M43) between the F and G sections when my friend Doc pointed: “Look!”
To our left, a plume of smoke billowed into the morning sky. Young boys and men were dragging burning tyres across Vilakazi Street. A woman was running from the scene of chaos into the Caltex garage on the corner. Fifty metres away, a large group was chanting freedom songs and dancing.
All along the M43, which snakes along the eastern spine of Soshanguve township, we were confronted by signs of protest: rocks strewn across the street to block car movement, wire rings from burnt tyres, ash strewn across the streets. Motorists nudged their way along, avoiding the impediments on the roads, stopping to remove some of them.
Soshanguve as a whole was not burning. I drove to many other parts of the townships that day and it was peaceful. People walked to church. I bought my newspapers at the placid BP garage on Commissioner and Matlakala streets. But sections F, G, and H of Soshanguve seemed to be in turmoil. There was anger on the streets.
The reason? There was no water coming out of the taps. There was no water in the SS section, either, but there were no riots there. Maybe later, maybe some other day when their patience runs dry.
The explosion of anger in those three sections of the township was unorganised, random, instantaneous. In the streets that day, I heard many people say “batho ba utlwile” — Sesotho for “people have had enough”.
In his state of the nation speech just three days before my Soshanguve trip, President Cyril Ramaphosa had lauded the fact that South Africa had been taken off the FATF greylist of financially dodgy countries. A risk had been tempered. But how risky is this country right now, really? How close are we from seeing the anger, in those three sections of Soshanguve, exploding in many other parts of South Africa? What is our risk profile now, considering the widespread water shortages of the past few weeks?
Water. People cannot live without water.
In his state of the nation speech last week Ramaphosa asserted: “Organised crime is now the most immediate threat to our democracy, our society and our economic development.”
That may be so, but I am more inclined to agree with the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) that “the real threat to our democracy is corruption thriving within many government institutions, enabled by the very leadership that sits within the president’s cabinet and leadership ranks”.
The people blockading roads in Soshanguve on Sunday were not just protesting against the lack of water. They were protesting against the corruption that has brought us here, to a place where municipalities from Joburg to Emfuleni to Tshwane now have no capacity to provide clean running water. This is the real risk profile we now have. Anarchy and chaos are this close. People can live through the ignominy and hardship of electricity cuts. They cannot live without water.
In Pretoria’s suburbs, townships and informal settlements, ordinary citizens point at the now ubiquitous water tankers that crisscross neighbourhoods and say openly: “That’s why we don’t have water. Councillors’ relatives and friends are sabotaging and breaking down water systems, so they can eat.”
It’s corruption writ large. It’s a cancer, and it has brought us to this severe place.
Ramaphosa said last week that the country had “turned a corner” but cautioned that we are “far from where we need to be”. His optimism is welcome, but the reality is that we are inching forward but have not yet turned the corner. Indeed, it is when you see the anger and fear elicited by the water shortages that you realise that our risk profile has seriously increased. Let us not forget how violent and destructive the water riots in townships in western Joburg were last October.
The cancer of corruption has brought us to the brink. It is possible to claw our way back, but we need to realise that we are now always on a tightrope.
That’s what I saw in Soshanguve last week. The breaking point is frightfully close.
