JZ 'shocked people still live like this'

Busisiwe Mlotshwa got down on her knees, broke into sobs and clutched President Jacob Zuma's hand when he paid a surprise visit to her home in the Sweetwater informal settlement, south of Johannesburg, yesterday.

Mlotshwa, 50, an unemployed mother of six, struggled for words, eventually telling Zuma: "Nothing is going my way and all I am waiting for is to die."

Mlotshwa and her neighbours in the sprawling settlement about 20km from the Johannesburg CBD, do not have toilets, electricity or an adequate water supply.

There is no sign of low-cost government houses being built in the area.

Mlotshwa told Zuma: "My daughter does not listen to me because an unemployed mother has no voice. One day she came from school, changed her clothes and decided to go to town to sell her body.

"She has turned to prostitution and I am told that taxi drivers are sharing her in town. She told me she would rather be a prostitute than stay at home."

Zuma told the residents of Sweetwater he had decided to visit after receiving repeated complaints on his presidential hotline about the conditions in which they were living.

His spokesman, Zizi Kodwa, said a decision was taken not to alert the local authorities about the visit because they did not want them to prepare the community in any way.

Zuma said Sweetwater would be high on the agenda at a meeting he is to hold today with the premiers of all nine provinces.

"Part of my visit was in preparation for that meeting because I don't want to hear of a good report about housing whereas I was here," he told about 40 residents.

Mlotshwa, who has herself called Zuma's hotline and sent letters about her desperate living conditions to ANC headquarters, told Zuma: "Even my [mud] house is falling apart. I have six children and survive on a R200 social grant I get for my [14-year-old] last-born and I feel like I have no reason to be alive. No one can employ a woman my age."

Sweetwater residents complained that their Johannesburg municipal councillor, Freedom Sotshantsha, drives a yellow Hummer and is accompanied by police whenever he comes to the area.

They told Zuma that Sotshantsha's police escorts had fired rubber bullets at them during service-delivery protests earlier this year. Colonel Sonja Slabbert, the area's station commander, denied any knowledge of this.

Zuma said: "I thought I should come to look at [Sweetwater] because of the way people described it to me. All that the people were saying is what I saw; the problems they have.

"As you have seen, it is something you cannot describe, that human beings live in such conditions. We are taken aback to see what is meant by freedom if people still live in the manner in which they live. When I came I thought there was no councillor here because they are supposed to help the people.

"And they say the councillor comes with the police, he shoots them. I am certainly going to be seeing the province and talk to national government ... something needs to be done."

Zuma said he was "very keen" to meet Sotshantsha to "get to the bottom of the matter".

Yesterday afternoon, Sotshantsha told The Times he had learned of Zuma's visit to his ward only when the president was about to leave.

"Yes I do own a Hummer. People should not compare my Hummer with the development in the area.

"I bought this to enable me to move around in the area as it is often impossible to move around when it rains as the roads are bad," he said. "I did not buy the Hummer cash, I am paying it from the salary I get as a councillor."

He said the City of Johannesburg was drawing up plans to develop infrastructure in Sweetwater.

He asked for a police escort whenever he went into the area because he had been attacked once and almost killed during a meeting with residents in Thulabantwana, an area next to Sweetwater, in 2006, Sotshantsha said.

"After that, I don't take any chances as there are always plans to kill me. Even if you came to my house now you will find police outside my yard," he said.

In August, Zuma paid a surprise visit to Siyathemba, a township outside Balfour, Mpumalanga, after violent service-delivery protests wracked the area.

The mayor under whom the area falls, Lefty Tsotetsi, had already knocked off by the time Zuma visited his office at 3:30pm.

Zuma is scheduled to return to Balfour at the weekend to follow up on residents' grievances.