ANC CONFIDENT OF CONTINUED STRENGTH IN NORTHERN

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 PRETORIA 000816

SIPDIS

STATE PLEASE PASS TO HUD

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV ECON EFIN EINV EAID SF KDEM
SUBJECT: ANC CONFIDENT OF CONTINUED STRENGTH IN NORTHERN
CAPE CAPITAL DESPITE SERVICE DELIVERY HICCOUGHS

REF: A. 05 PRETORIA 4585 (NOTAL)

B. 06 PRETORIA 347
(U) This cable is Sensitive But Unclassified. Not for
Internet distribution.


1. (SBU) Summary: The ANC heads into local elections in
the Northern Cape?s main urban area confident of another
overwhelming showing. Some progress in expanding service
delivery and a weak and fractured opposition are the
basis for that optimism. Nonetheless, persistent
unhappiness over service and housing availability among
the poorest residents of Sol Plaatje municipality, which
includes the provincial capital of Kimberley, help
explain why the election run-up has been generally low
key amid some expressions of apathy and voter
consternation toward the ANC. End Summary.

--------------
The Background
--------------


2. (SBU) This cable is one of a series by an interagency
Mission team to report how local government service
delivery is affecting the March 1 local elections, as
well as to report on the run-up to the elections
themselves (Reftels A, B). The Reporting Officer visited
Sol Plaatje municipality, which is home to roughly one
quarter of the more than 800,000 residents of the
Northern Cape, on February 16-17. Although the Northern
Cape is the largest of South Africa?s nine provinces, it
is the least populous.


3. (U) Kimberley itself is best known as a diamond
mining center, a fact reflected in the names of the
local newspaper -- The Diamond Field Advertiser (DFA) --
and the community radio station ? Radio Teemaneng, which
means ""diamond" in the local dialect. Kimberley boasts
very few multistory buildings but is quite proud of its
one very Big Hole -- an open pit some 800 meters deep
where diamonds were mined until 1914. It is the city?s
major tourist attraction. Although some local mining
continues, diamonds are not forever in Kimberley; a few
thousand people lost their jobs last year due to mine
closures, contributing to an official municipal
unemployment rate of 26%, roughly the same as the
national rate.

--------------
ANC Confidence
--------------


4. (SBU) To hear Sol Plaatje Executive Mayor Patrick
Lenyibi assess the upcoming elections, the ANC hasn?t a
worry. Dressed in Adidas T-shirt and blue sweatpants as
he chats in his comfortable downtown office, he
predicted his party would win about 45 municipal council
seats, up from the 40 it now holds (the body itself will
expand from 53 to 55 seats). He expected the ANC would
win 90 percent of the municipal vote, up from 79 percent
four years ago, and turnout would be high. He dismissed
the opposition Independent Democrats as a ""non-
starter"" political party; he pooh-poohed the African
Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) as a prayer group; and
he was untroubled by the Democratic Alliance (DA),which
holds most of the remaining municipal council seats with
support from whites and from some of the Afrikaans-
speaking mixed-race community that accounts for about
one-fourth the local population.

--------------
Service Delivery and Housing Problems ?
--------------


5. (SBU) Local journalists, while acknowledging the ANC
should win handily, were not sure the victory will be of
quite the magnitude Lenyibi predicts. DFA Managing
Editor Johan du Plessis said there had been little
electoral excitement, and he believed enthusiasm for the
ANC had diminished. Unemployment, health care and
housing all remain contentious issues among some of the
electorate. Although a reported 90 percent of local
residents have access to basic services such as water,
sanitation and electricity ? a substantially higher
proportion than the national average -- some people have
been enraged by services shut off for not paying bills.

PRETORIA 00000816 002 OF 002




6. (SBU) Lenyibi acknowledged there was frustration over
services and said officials sometimes unrealistically
promised quick action. But he was satisfied that
progress was being made at an acceptable pace. "What
communities want to see is visibility of leadership," he
said, which means that he often scurries into the field
responding to complaints. Just before speaking with the
Reporting Officer he visited the Soul City neighborhood,
where he got an earful from residents recently resettled
in new government housing. Among the litany of problems
they told the Reporting Officer, who visited soon after
the mayor, were no electricity, poorly constructed
homes, frequent flooding and faulty plumbing.


7. (SBU) Sophia Elizabeth Veldtman, a mother of four who
moved into a new Soul City home a year ago, used a broom
as a pointer to show where the walls were cracking and
the cement was falling out. She said that her home
flooded when the rains come. Still, she was thankful she
no longer lives in a makeshift shack in a nearby
shantytown. "I can?t say it is bad. I am just happy with
what the government gave me." Similar sentiments were
heard from other Soul City residents, and when Poppy
Mlambo, speaker of the Sol Plaatje Municipal Council,
drove up in her metallic-red Toyota compact SUV, the few
residents who gathered around treated her with respect.
Yet there was little overt sign of enthusiasm for the
ANC in Soul City other than a sea of campaign posters,
and it was jarring to see a smattering of DA campaign
posters plastered to the walls of homes funded by the
ANC government.

--------------
? And Ensuing Anger
--------------


8. (SBU) The mood was uglier in parts of Greenpoint, an
informal settlement of corrugated-metal shacks just
outside Kimberley proper where residents, many of them
mixed race, earlier threatened to boycott the election
because of lack of services. Their primary complaint was
the continued use of a single communal "bucket" toilet,
whose description by locals so nauseated the Reporting
Officer that he declined to investigate himself. "I
won?t vote March 1," said a man named August as he
repaired a bed headboard in his yard. "Eleven years
voting and my life is still the same. We?re like
stepladders for the politicians." Other Greenpoint
residents who have moved into new, government-supplied
homes were less agitated but still waiting to finally
get electricity. "I can?t use a television, I can?t use
a fridge, I can?t use an iron kettle," Nick Williams,
64, said while standing outside his ramshackle
convenience store.


9. (SBU) Perhaps the most serious local protest over
services came last year when residents of Roodepan
township in northwest Kimberley blocked streets with
burning tires to protest service cuts to those who
couldn?t pay. Romeo Ackeer, whose wife is the local ACDP
candidate for municipal council, said he hears lots of
complaints from residents whose electricity and water
have been turned off. "People are sick and tired. They
don?t want to vote." Immanuel Mokallee, a neighborhood
ANC leader whose lovely home includes a veranda lined
with hedges and pink vincas, saw it differently,
pointing to paved roads and a new community multipurpose
center as recent improvements. He said government was
broadening services as fast as its limited resources
allowed.


10. (SBU) Comment: Many of Sol Plaatje municipality?s
neediest people believe the ANC has not been
sufficiently responsive to their requests for improved
services and housing. While this has only rarely led to
protests and does not endanger the ANC?s local political
dominance in the near term, there can be little doubt
that the ANC risks a further erosion of prestige among
an important core constituency should its perceived
performance not improve. End Comment.

TEITELBAUM