VZCZCXRO9864
PP RUEHDU RUEHJO RUEHMR
DE RUEHSA #0816/01 0581258
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 271258Z FEB 06
FM AMEMBASSY PRETORIA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 1846
RUCNSAD/SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY
RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASHDC
RUCPDC/DEPT OF COMMERCE WASHDC
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHINGTON DC

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