Kameraad Mhambi

I wrote this post BET. Before ET was killed. The mood in the country has shifted since. But here is my thoughts anyway.

Vodacom Park Rugby Stadium (Aka Free State Stadium) – Cheetahs vs Brumbies, originally uploaded by Just_Ice..

One can’t but be impressed with all the construction evident all over Gauteng and the Free state. It’s a bit chaotic yes, but it’s everywhere.

The World Cup has at last galvanised the lead footed South Africa into action.

The Centurion Gautrian bridge is truly impressive. And judging by how bad the traffic is now, you can see even the motor loving South Africans round these parts taking to it out of sheer desperation.

I’ve been staying at my sister’s in Pretoria East. And here at least a few things are apparent. Pretoria East looks to be very wealthy. It looked like that ten years ago. But it certainly has not gotten poorer. If anything it’s wealthier, and its sprawl is spilling wider.

Now it encompasses Irene, and former Prime Minister Smuts’s modest home, seems to be even more modest in comparison. No sign of the poor white problem in Pretoria East.

On to Bloemfontein, and the countryside is lush and green.

Here too there’s construction work everywhere. And the benefit of being a World Cup Host more self-evident. The stadium is being linked via the canal to the station via a public walkway.

Why it takes a World Cup to goad the city council into building such a basic public space and thoroughfare is beyond me. But at least Bloemfontein has that now.

Next-door is the Sand du Plessis theatre. An impressive building, but the grand institution is nearly bankrupt, it’s equipment gone or broken and its creative output dwindling dramatically.

South Africa’s twin gods of shopping and sport (bar God himself – who is BIG round these parts) are right next-door, and is suffering no such problems. It’s temples; the mall and the stadium are both having a massive facelift.

In Bloem you notice many more poor whites than in Pretoria East. Still Bloemfontein looks relatively affluent.

No service delivery problems then? My little sister says that the municipality is considering farming out its services, electricity, water and garbage collection to a private company. In my three days there, we suffered (only) one day without water.

Apparently one irate Bloemfontein burger dumped his garbage inside the municipal headquarters, the glass encased Bram Fischer building, after it had no been collected.

Everybody expects municipal services to be more expensive after it gets privatised, but hopefully better.

Related deployments:

1. Where the English have football the South Africans have politics
2. Die Blou Bulle in Orlando, Soweto