Waiting in Vain

I come from a small town called Bitterfontein and the name says it all. If you have to drive through Bitterfontein at any given time you would think the people is fast asleep. I know that currently there are less than a 1000 people staying in Bitterfontein because most people need to look for jobs outside the town.

Since 2002 I am the only graduate and most youngsters stay at home ‘looking’ for a job. Some people, especially if they are from the city, would find the laid back nature of Bitterfontein quite frustrating.

But something happened about two weeks ago that shocked the whole Bitterfontein. It happened so fast; they protested for jobs and houses and they even made the regional newspaper!

The housing issue in Bitterfontein is a rather sensitive or delicate situation. If you are a government official and you use the words ‘housing’ or ‘house’, they will swear at you, your mom and your dead grandparents.
The housing situation in Bitterfontein goes as far back as the 1980s. According to one of the local leaders they were promised houses in 1986 and when 1994 came this promise was repeated and thereafter before very major election.

If you go to Bitterfontein now, you would rarely find a house that does not have back yard dwellers. To make matters worse 22 of the back yard dwellers were promised houses, they even have the plots in their names. However, when Bitterfontein in 2011 changed from a district management area under the West Coast District Municipality to a ward of the Matzikama Municipality they were put on a waiting list because there are more priority areas in the greater Matzikama than Bitterfontein. This made people despondent towards their new municipality.

And then Matzikama made the mistake that the people were waiting for all along. Matzikama contracted people from outside Bitterfontein to clean the streets. This angered the youth in particular.

What happen next could not have been predicted by any political analyst and I am 100 percent sure those who participated in the protest march were also unable to. After a confrontation with the municipality staff they started burning tyres in the main street of Bitterfontein; they one that take you to the gas station.

The police was called in but even they were unable stop the protesters or they were too scared because some of the protesters were their sisters, brothers, uncles and aunties. Or they have never seen a protest march and they were dumbfounded by what was happening. The protesters went on burning the dustbins and throwing rubbish everywhere; it took them a couple of hours to cool down and to go back to their everyday of living which is waiting on the government to deliver.

8 May 2012