"I feel closer to a country like Somalia"

“I will never vote again. If a political party gives me work first, then I will vote for them. The political leaders want votes from us, then after they get the votes they forget about us and go and help other nations and other areas. If something is happening in Mozambique, they make sure they help out there, but they forget about the lives of the people in their area. I think they know the local people will always vote for them, that’s why they don’t care about us. They think we are forced to vote for the ANC because there is no one else. But if the other parties can try and up their game, maybe political parties like the ANC can wake up.

I don’t feel part of South Africa. Here in the Transkei, I feel closer to a country like Somalia or Zimbabwe, countries suffering from starvation. We are getting poorer and poorer. There’s no hope. You see people complaining on the TV about service delivery and instead of changing, things are getting worse. We’ve given up. Especially in the villages. We have given up because things are not getting any better."

These are the words of Ntombi Sobuza, 34, from Ntlaza village in Pondoland, responding to my question of how life had changed for them since 1994. She spoke to me through a translator. I met Ntombi in the spaza shop at the Isinuka sulphur springs about 10km outside Port St Johns. There were about 15 people gathered out of the rain in this dilapidated shack shop, all wellness seekers who had travelled from villages around the Transkei to bathe in the sulphuric waters, sniff the sulphuric gases (which they call 'avicksini') and paint their skin with the white clay that lines the pools that's known to cure skin ailments. It's the Transkei version of Iceland's Blue Lagoon, except here it's free to take the waters. Which is a good thing, because Ntombi, like all of the other people who were here to take the waters, is unemployed.

Does she have hope? "We are pinning our hope on 2010, that life will be much more better. Maybe they are going to be asked to be strikers of Bafana Bafana, and then they will get a lot of money," she jokes.