Bongiseni Bhengu is under pressure. It is tough enough being a municipal councillor constantly harassed to speed up service delivery and development, but when your ward is home to the president of the country, that pressure is tenfold.
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| The president's homestead at Kwanxamalala in Nkandla as it looked in 2009. |
Bhengu's constituency is ward 14 in Nkandla, the home town of SA'S number one citizen. Bhengu's home in the village of Kwanxamalala, nestled below the rolling hills of Mabengela and overlooking the sprawling Nkandla forest, is also a stone's throw away from the Zuma homestead.
Bhengu's first problem is that the residents of ward 14 assume he has a direct line to the president.
"That I am a councillor to the president comes with a lot of pressure," he says.
"People have a perception that the president will just wake up in the morning and say: 'I have decided to develop this area.'
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| Nkandla Now |
"They want to know what is it that I have discussed with the president about development, and they expect the president to wave a magic wand and develop the ward overnight.
"These people seem to forget that Zuma is not the president of ward 14 and Nkandla alone but of South Africa. In their view the president should stick with us and our problems alone."
The second, and bigger, problem for Bhengu is dealing with people outside his ward who feel that it is benefiting from major infrastructure developments because it is home to Zuma.
With Nkandla having mushroomed from a rural, undeveloped area a few years ago into one with several community projects and
Swidespread infrastructure roll-out, it is not hard to see where such perceptions come from. Several community projects have developed and are consolidated around Nkandla's Lindela Thusong Multipurpose Centre, which houses a library, a post office, a municipal office, Home Affairs offices, the Jacob Zuma Education Trust office and an Ithala ATM.
"It helps a lot to bring services closer to people, and the president had a hand in it coming here," says Bhengu. The centre was built while Zuma was the deputy president.
Across from the centre, there is the Mamba One Stop Development Centre, built at a cost of R12.8 million by the former Kwazulu-natal Social Development MEC, Meshack Radebe.
This centre, which is not yet used to its full capacity, is meant to house a clinic and Home Affairs and Labour offices. There are social workers, an HIV/AIDS NGO and community projects operating from it at the moment.
Another facility, called Tulwane One Stop Development Centre, offering similar services, was built nearby by Radebe.
There were lavish functions to open both centres, attended by Zuma in the build-up to the 2009 elections. At the time, this triggered an angry reaction from the DA in the province, who charged that public funds were being used to campaign for the ANC.
Radebe responded by saying that the residents of Nkandla were not going to be punished by being excluded from service delivery just because Zuma happened to come from the town.
During The Mercury's recent visit to the area, there was a hive of developmental activity and there were several construction sites. In one project, the finishing touches were being put to road P55 from Eshowe to Nkandla, and road P15/2, which runs through Zuma's home town to Kranskop and on to Pietermaritzburg. This R500 million road network, covering 250km, is part of a project known as the Tale of Four Cities because it links Ulundi, Empangeni/richards Bay, Durban and Pietermaritzburg.
Part of the road from Kranskop is already tarred, providing easy access for Zuma should he decide to travel straight to Nkandla from Pietermaritzburg, instead of going via Eshowe using the N2, as is usually the case. Bhengu says the development and tarring of the roads will help to shorten the journey between Nkandla and Durban. "It will also attract business opportunities into the area and help create jobs," he says.
Kwanele Ncalane, a spokesman for the KZN Transport Department, rejects suggestions that the construction of the road has anything to do with the fact that the home of the president is on the same route.
"If this is the case, people will have to explain why we have developed and are still developing and tarring thousands of kilometres of roads throughout the province of Kwazulu-natal," says Ncalane.
In the past three years, thousands of homes in Nkandla have received electricity connections at a cost of R44m. Replying to a parliamentary question in March 2011, Energy Minister Dipuo Peters said there would be 3 000 electricity connections in six villages in the Nkandla area.
Peters said that Zuma's village of Kwanxamalala was among those that would benefit from electrification projects budgeted for 2011/12.
She said that in 2011/12 the government would aim to make 648 electricity connections in four other Nkandla villages. The programme would cost a total of R12m.
A further R20m worth of connections were expected in the area during the 2012/13 financial year, but this figure would decrease to R10m in the 2013/14 financial year.
At another construction site, a massive upgrading of the water reservoir and treatment plant - built by the Uthungulu district municipality for R45m - is under way.
The activity in Nkandla has also caught the attention of the private sector, with the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Nafcoc) announcing plans last year to build a R7m condom factory in the rural town.
Adding that this had nothing to do with Zuma's links to the town, Nafcoc said the factory would create about 300 jobs and that 20 percent of its ownership would eventually go to the local community.
The main development in the area, however, is the consolidation of the president's homestead, which is said to have undergone a R64m upgrade. This expansion, building on the African theme of his home, boasts six double-storey thatched rondavels meant for his wives.
Security has been beefed up, with the erection of a steel wall around the expanding homestead.
The renovation, encroaching on the small road that passes the property, has redefined the landscape of the village.
Last year it was reported that the homestead was to include a clinic, a helipad and accommodation for medical staff, all to make it easier for the president to receive medical assistance when he is at Nkandla.
Just behind the Zuma homestead is a cluster of more than 10 standalone thatched houses.
Still unoccupied, these are believed to be guest houses for visitors and other VIPS.
And behind the guest houses is a sports ground, which is still under construction.
Beyond this stands the massive new residence of Zuma's flamboyant nephew, Khulubuse Zuma, which includes two stand-alone double-storey flats and two standalone houses.
Requests by The Mercury to gain access to the properties were turned down because they have been declared national key points.
For the locals, this development boom was in no doubt thanks to Zuma and his commitment to rural development.
Earlier this year, the Jacob Zuma Foundation handed over five threebedroomed houses to needy families around Lindela, Nkandla.
Bhengu says these were the first of a number of houses to be built by the foundation for the needy in the province.
He says Zuma used his influence to get former president Nelson Mandela to have Mnyakanyaka High School, next to Zuma's home, renovated by mining company Goldfields. It now boasts a computer laboratory, thanks to Zuma's initiative.
Lennox Mabaso, a spokesman for the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, says that Nkandla is one of many towns that are being given a facelift as part of the department's small towns rehabilitation programme.
"The idea is make it attractive to investors and to cap the migration of people to urban areas," says Mabaso.
"Any assumption that this development is coming to Nkandla because of Zuma is mischievous to the extreme.
"It is the deliberate misrepresentation of facts - an onslaught by some on the president as someone who is only concerned about himself."
Whatever the case, for the residents of Nkandla it is manna from heaven.
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