When he was minister for housing, Joe Slovo had estimated that half the black population lacked a secure roof over their and that one and a half million houses would have to be built immediately. Nothing like this has happened. The poorest get a R15,000 housing grant, which seldom pays for more than a jerry-built matchbox. Out of 22,000 land restitution cases, only a handful have been settled. In the Eastern Cape, where few tourists go, silhouettes of women file across the saddle of a hill to draw water from a well where cattle drink and defecate.
Most rural people have no choice but to walk up to half a mile to get water.
Most have no sanitation, no electricity and no telephone, and no work. The shadows you pass on the road are those of stunted children and their mothers, walking, carrying, enduring. Stanley Mbalala, one of the survivors, remembers a forest, which became firewood during the first winter. They lived in tents and wooden huts with zinc roofs and earthen floors. In the centre is a children's cemetery.