UR TV CAST

In the old days, it was a place where blacks simply never used to go. Even now, he prefers to stay in his shack and function out of the ANC offices in Tshing rather than live and work in town. It is not out of fear or because he is being prevented from doing so It’s a lack of familiarty resulting from apartheid. “It’s just that I’m not used to spending time with white people,” he says “It’s not a question of the pigment of their skin It’s just uncomfortable for me.

This may be just, but it is certainly not going to be popular. And it is in this area that Mbambalala is going to have to make his hardest sell. He needs to convince the whites that it is in their best interests to uplift Tshing in order to create a prosperous, united Ventersdorp. Togetherness, though, remains a frightening idea.Blacks and whites have always lived in a peculiar intimacy in small towns like Ventersdorp. Black women work in white houses and help raise white children. Black “boys” tend white gardens, drive white tractors and ploughs, and work side-by-side with white farmers.

Under apartheid, the ANC encouraged people not to pay their taxes, partly as a protest and partly to make black areas ungovernable. Now that the ANC is in government, it is finding out what other governments have known for years: that it is hard to get people to part with money.Still, most of the changes will have to be subsidised by the white part of town. Out of 2,500 houses and shacks in Tshing, less than 150 have electricity and running water. Even fewer have flush toilets.The money to deliver these necessities depends partly on reversing black non-payment of local rates.