"I am ashamed." Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who visited Grahamstown on Tuesday as leader of the Ministerial Sanitation Task Team, was expressing her shock at how poor people in Makana were living.
View the photo gallery of her visit
"I am ashamed." Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who visited Grahamstown on Tuesday as leader of the Ministerial Sanitation Task Team, was expressing her shock at how poor people in Makana were living.
View the photo gallery of her visit
“I'm ashamed that 17 years down the line, I have been shown your shocking housing system," Madikizela-Mandela said. "I do not believe that we still have our people living in those types of houses. In fact, the shacks are better than the houses I've just seen. I saw toilets without doors, some of them broken.” said Madikizela-Mandela.
While her team's job was to advise Minister of Human Settlements, Tokyo Sexwale, on how to deal with incomplete and uncovered toilets throughout South Africa, she said it was impossible to separate this from the question of housing. “These are intertwined," she said. "If needs be, we will introduce amendments to our housing policy. "I really hope that you are going to get rid of the houses I drove past," Madikizela-Mandela said.
She said her team would be ruthless in uncovering irregularities. “We will expose all the weaknesses that have made us to be where we are today and why there have been such problems in advancing the lives of our people in relation to sanitation," she said.
"It is unacceptable that under a democratic government, 17 years down the line, our people still live like this. "We are here to say we are going to roll up our sleeves and get to work. We do not believe in talking any more."
The Mayoral Committee member leading the Infrastructural Development portfolio in Makana Municipality, Nomhle Gaga, assured Madikizela-Mandela and her team that Makana Municipality was determined to eradicate the bucket toilet system, a project that would cost R75 million.
"We are starting to eradicate the bucket system in KwaNdancama., Glebe and also in Mission. On Friday the work will start,” said Gaga.
