Small Town View Of the Big World

 The chronicles of Matjhabeng: The Mafia, a broken city, and A Racist Mayor.

Growing up I had always heard my grandmother say “things were better during apartheid” I could never quite believe it, because how dare she say something like that? We are living in the time of “democracy” we are living in the time of the ANC. But there are a few things she was bemoaning the lack of jobs, no services to black areas and clearly ignoring the needs of the majority, the defence was always “the ANC is undoing apartheid so it takes a while to do it.”  This year I had to come to terms that the ANC is dead, the way 2020 is going some dead apartheid era mayor might rise from the dead and brag that things were way better in this municipality under his watch and it would be very hard to debate against him.

 

Although Pieter Louis Myburgh wrote a wonderful book about how the Free State was captured by the Ace Magashule it ignores the finer points of how the ANC in the Free State no longer exists and has been co-opted by a loosely linked mob like organisation, Ace might have precipitated this new wave of so called politician but it has gotten to a level where it is totally out of control. In the beginning ANC corruption was boiled down to incompetence, lack of accountability and greed but places like Matjhabeng have elevated the conversation to utter stupidity and definite criminal enterprise. The Most amazing of these is that Eskom has attached the municipal account to recoup the funds owed to it that amounted to about R3 Billion, this after the account was frozen in 2014, before we criticize the halfwits leading the town you would ask why have the people not paid their electric bills, well the allegation is that when bills are paid in cash the cash never actually makes it into the municipal coffers…….. it gets pocketed EVERY TIME!!!! No one seems to mind, and no one holds anyone accountable.

There is a group in this Municipality that needs deeper investigations they call themselves “zingu seven” it is alleged that nothing happens without them in this town, they are the mafia enforcers who have the premier’s ear. What boggles the mind the most is that a city with one of the highest unemployment rates had 136 unused farms.

Earlier this year the executive Mayor was caught on video asking soldiers who were deployed as part of efforts to help flatten the COVID-19 curve, he instructed the soldiers to “skop, skiet en donner” the coloured community while using a racist term in defining that community he went on to use another racist stereotype of claiming that Coloured people were drunkards,