In January 1981 I began my schooling at Phangindlela Junior Secondary School in Mqanduli. Though the school was in another village, Maqomeni, it was still just under 2km from my home, so we went to class on foot. We were lucky, but some kids were not.
Those who came from Ngcanasini, Manqabeni or the upper perimeters of my village could walk up to 5km in each direction daily. There was no respite in winter or when it rained. Not every child had shoes or fully protective winter or rain clothing. The worst was when you slipped and fell in the mud while still going to class because turning back was not an option unless you had just left home.
School fees were R2 per annum in lower primary school, R4 at senior primary and R16 in junior secondary (grades 7 to 9). It is free now. Still, some families were so poor they couldn’t afford to pay.
We had no sports facilities at all. For athletics we used a small, open patch in front of the school that was the Maqomeni village’s makeshift soccer field. It was next to a graveyard where many of my paternal ancestors rest, and my grandfather’s maize planting allocation (my grandmother had her own — a story for another day).
My grandfather was a committed subsistence farmer, perhaps too committed if you ask me. He used to wake us up at 3am during maize planting season because it took more than an hour to yoke the oxen, load fertiliser, seed and provisions into the back of his bakkie and then make the 2km trek on foot. Ever patient (and repetitive) with his explanations, he used to say: “By 9.30am we will be coming home, unlike some who want to labour in the heat because they wake up late.”
Though the relative hardships of the earlier years stand me (and I know many others) in good stead in respect of work ethic, it is not the life people should live in 2022.
The routine only slightly improved in December when we had to turn up the soil and remove the weeds. We only woke up at 4am and were already working by 5am, as the sun threatened to break through the horizon.
This was not in vain. When in 1983 my late uncle told my grandfather that he needed R1,050 to register at the then University of Transkei (now Walter Sisulu University), my grandfather sold 300kg of maize and about five sheep to raise some of the money. This was after he had recovered from the dizzy spell he suffered upon hearing the staggering amount.
My uncle was the first person in my family to go to university straight after high school.
This was my life for virtually all my childhood years. It was no different to other children in the village. At five years old, one of my cousins, now a physician, had to be provided a small metal bucket so she could also fetch water from the river with my aunts and older cousins. She would not stop crying if they left her behind. That trek was a total of 4km, to the Mgomanzi River and back.
The women had to balance the water containers on their heads. That’s because there was no piped water. Our rainwater tank often ran dry, so there were few other options. We learned from an early age how to use a bottle cap of Jik to disinfect the water to avoid waterborne diseases such as cholera.
We played soccer on the grazing land. There was no coaching, and field markings were made by digging the grass out. As you can imagine, they were extremely imprecise.
Some things have since changed. There is no soccer field now as it was replaced with more settlements as the population grew. Every home has electricity, with communal running water being available much more than before, though not consistently.
Other things have changed, too.
Since the gold mining sector’s production decline, fewer men work in the mines. In fact, when I worked for a mining company between 2006 and 2013, I was one of only three people in my village who still had anything to do with a mine. In the 1980s, the percentage was closer to 60%. Today, that is the approximate unemployment rate in the area.
Despite having lived in the city for a long time and only getting to visit my village about once a quarter, I find it difficult to think of the future and development in ways that don’t revolve around life where I come from. I know it is very important, but I get mildly irritated (or jealous) at all the talk about the “township economy” because it gives me the impression that villages have been forgotten.
I want a different country because we should have one. Though the relative hardships of the earlier years stand me (and I know many others) in good stead in respect of work ethic, it is not the life people should live in 2022. Yet, it still happens.
Every village should have paved roads and every child should have access to either a bicycle or state-provided school transport. Every home should have clean running water on its premises. Schools should not just have the full complement of teachers and academic facilities, but sporting and cultural activities too.
Our country should be obsessive about early childhood development, which should inform much of our social policy thinking and implementation. This should involve child, family and community support infrastructure, where each child can have the best chance possible to reach their fullest potential.
If we do this, we will have more people being active participants in the economy, fuelling its growth and sustainability. But this is a factor of choices, political choices.
Since we are a democracy, the most important political choice is by the citizens when they vote. We need to vote for parties that can articulate, at a local level, how different life must be for the ordinary person, family and community.
We will have no country if we allow ourselves to be held to ransom.
Our politics doesn’t do this. It is all bombastic, complicated and obscure language designed to impress niche middle class chatter rather than to solve the problems of real people, families and communities. The biggest culprit in this is the pseudo-Marxist nonsense often used to legitimise people whose central purpose is to attain power for its own sake, and then hold society in an elite class grip while looting.
Feeling compelled to vote, people make a choice nonetheless. I am not blaming the voters but lack of meaningful choice and adequate political articulation. I suspect this is one of the reasons more people are beginning to check out of politics.
The second political choice is by those in power. Choosing to pour tens of billions of rand into a continually failing SA Airways is not the way to build a better life and economy. Too much public money goes into almost worthless schemes by a dogmatic and often ignorant political class that does not know the basics of how to develop and grow a just, inclusive economy.
The final political choice relates to the conception of governance and use of public institutions. Our public institutions are weak because we have a degenerate political culture, a weak democratic culture and corrupt politicians. There is no universe in which we can be in this state and still build a better life for South Africans.
For a different future we need four interventions.
The first is for citizens to organise outside party politics to determine a set of national priorities upon which to bargain with formal political power. In other words, a citizens’ manifesto to which the political class must choose whether they will sign up to or not.
Second, clarity of the political economic and social values we choose. We need a state that is positioned as an agent of development, wellbeing and progress, and not the centre of life that chokes progress the moment it has problems, as ours currently does.
Third, for good citizens to rethink their relationship with the outcomes they desire, and see themselves as designers and implementers thereof, within and outside political and government institutions. In a democracy, we must have a strong sense of jealous ownership of every lever of power.
Finally, an obsessive reintroduction of integrity and accountability. Those who steal must go to prison, and as fast as possible, whether they can instigate riots or not. We will have no country if we allow ourselves to be held to ransom.
Absent of this, the life I lived as a child will continue to be the life millions of children live, and worse.
Songezo Zibi is chairperson of the Rivonia Circle.
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