AFP/Johannesburg


African National Congress youth wing leader Julius Malema speaks during a political meeting yesterday in Rammulotsi township
South Africa’s ruling ANC yesterday demanded that “heads must roll” over the construction of open-air toilets that have embarrassed the party ahead of polls.
“Heads must roll in terms of people who have taken this decision,” African National Congress youth wing leader Julius Malema told thousands of people in Rammulotsi township, near Viljoenskroon in the central Free State province.
Malema and other top party officials visited the community to do damage control after it emerged that the ANC-run municipality had built about 1,600 open-air toilets - some as far back as 2003 - after the ruling party slammed the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) for the same thing.
“We condemn this thing of open toilets unequivocally, because it is inhumane and indefensible,” said ANC head of organising and campaigns Fikile Mbalula.
The ANC has been left red-faced by the saga after the party’s youth league took the DA to court for building similar toilets in a township outside Cape Town.
A court last month ordered the DA-led municipality to enclose the toilets, siding with the ANC youth league’s argument that they infringed on human dignity.
The so-called “toilet wars” have become an issue of political point-scoring as the fight for votes heats up ahead of local government elections on May 18.
Susan Booysen, a political scientist at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, calls the saga a “particular low in South Africa’s democracy so far”.
“It’s just extreme politicking, extreme propaganda points that they’re trying to score around that. Of course... now it has blown up in the ANC’s face,” she said.
DA leaders claimed residents had agreed to build the toilet enclosures themselves, as the council had no funds to construct them - the same explanation municipal officials in Rammulotsi used.
But Malema said the officials should have known better.
“(Community members) agree to it because they are desperate, they are poor people, they have no option and they agree to anything that comes,” he said.
According to the national statistics agency about 6.6% of households in South Africa in 2009 had no toilets or used “bucket toilets” - chamber pots emptied periodically by the municipality. That figure is down from 12.6% in 2002.
Seventeen years after the end of apartheid, South Africa routinely sees violent protests in its shantytowns as residents demand better housing and services like water and electricity.
“Service delivery” has become a buzz word as the country heads into next week’s elections.
While the ANC will easily retain control of most of the country it has ruled since 1994, anger over living conditions in impoverished communities could cause much of the party’s traditional base to stay home, Booysen said.
“I see voters using abstention as an in-between phase between voting for the ANC and voting for an opposition party,” she said.
“The ANC increasingly has to work for its support.”