"We are free, we are under democracy, but there is nothing"

Mr Khawulezile Hlakula, 66, is the son of the brother of Walter Sisulu (nephew is not an African word), one of South Africa's great struggle leaders. Sisulu's real surname was Hlakula, but he changed it to protect his family during the dark days of the struggle. I met Mr Hlakula, 66, in the village of Kanye, near Ngcobo, where Walter Sisulu grew up. I spent two nights here as a guest of Faith Hlakula, wife of a Khayelitsha pastor, who invited me to her husband's village so I could experience first-hand life in rural South Africa.

In this village there is electricity, a decent-enough gravel road connecting the village with the R61 main thoroughfare into Ngcobo, running water in the form of 1 tap for every 15 homes, but no government-issue toilets. In the middle of the night you use a bucket, and in the morning, you take a walk to the corrugated shack surrounding a rudimentary long drop at the bottom of the maize field.

Mr Hlakula sought me out, because he had a lot to say...

"Ask people here and they'll say you are the first lady who comes here and asks us what we feel, what we need. Government didn’t do that. There was not one single person here from government to ask, hey, what do you feel? What do you need, you people here? No. We wrote a letter straight to government saying we need this and this and this. We get no reply. We get no reply.

You must say the white government before was good because that government was keeping the pressure on, you grew up under pressure. This government says this is democracy, but there is no democracy to us. That government was putting the pressure, keeping us doing what that government needs. Now you can say, I’m free, but you get nothing.

About 1 million people are not working, but the government don’t send any delegate to come and see why these guys don’t work, why they are suffering because they cannot get education. They don't try to get education straight to the people – no, not like that. That old government was very good, really, because we were not suffering from work at that time.

You see, the difference, we are free, we are under democracy, but there is nothing. There is no work, no money, no nothing. You can’t have education without money. There’s a lot of guys here who have Std 10, they are suffering, they do nothing. They are drinking. It’s our democracy that creates that. At that time we were under pressure. At that time, you’d never see a young person here. You’d never go to the bottle store and buy a bottle of brandy. That was a good government. Now it’s free for everyone to go get a brandy or beer to drink. Those things are going to spoil our children."