Mbeki: Poor not impatient

2004-04-02 11:07

Port Elizabeth - President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday he was "quite certain" that poor people were not impatient with the pace of delivery.

He was speaking during a visit to the N2 shack area of Port Elizabeth's Walmer Location at the start of his second day of electioneering in the Eastern Cape.

He visited 49-year-old Regina Pikosi in her two-roomed shack, and chatted to her in Xhosa as a forgotten kettle boiled away on the stove in the next room.

Speaking after Mbeki left, Pikosi said: "I told the president that we do not have water here, we live in tin houses and they leak."

Nevertheless she was glad to see Mbeki. "He is a good man," she said.

Mbeki told journalists that of the 10 zones in Walmer Location only two still have to be upgraded. Planning would be completed this year and infrastructure would go in 2005.

Asked if people were getting impatient with the pace of change, he said, "I'm quite certain the poor people are not."

Residents of N2 said they did not have proper housing, water and electricity, but they could see the 80% progress that had been made in replacing the shacks.

Mbeki had "absolutely no doubt" that poor people would vote for the African National Congress. "The reason for it is they can see there is progress."

There was impatience, but this impatience was not "a kind of rebellion."

Rather it was the kind of impatience that some one would show if he (Mbeki) was speaking too slowly.

Mbeki said residents had also criticised their ward councillor, a Democratic Alliance representative, Ann Knight.

"Each time she comes she won't get out of the car because she says the place is dirty," he said.

Even when they go to see her at her home, she kept them on the stoep.

"That's her response, but she's DA. They (the people of Walmer) are saying the municipal elections are coming next year. They want to correct that mistake."

- SAPA