“Don’t drink the water!” was the firm instruction of the staff as I entered the guest house in Makhanda.
What a strange prohibition but this was Wakanda (that fictional country of Marvel comics), as one academic naughtily called it, where a world-class university is surrounded by a third-world municipality.
It is a problem that has existed for decades and to the locals it appears insoluble.
After delivering a public lecture to the Rhodes community, I was driven for dinner to one of the few decent restaurants on High Street even if it did look like a bomb fell there recently.
It was a slow drive for you need to do two things: avoid the potholes and avoid the oncoming car avoiding the potholes as both vehicles search in the dark for any vestiges of tar.
At the corner of this once famous street is the High Corner Guesthouse that decades ago was remodelled by the famous poet Prof Guy Butler, and down the length of this road stands the once glorious Cathedral that linked the church to one of the main gates of the university.
Late into the night, beggars are everywhere. Most shops looked closed or boarded.
Even the sidewalks could deliver permanent injury if your stiletto shoes got stuck in one of the open crevices.
I stared down the street of what was once one of the most desirable university towns in SA for undergraduate students. No more.
Inside the university I would speak in one of a set of majestic lecture theatres fitted with the latest technologies and surrounded by luscious green grass and trees.
The campus hosts A-rated researchers and distinguished chairs and is one of the leading centres in the country in disciplines from chemistry to journalism and the biological sciences and language studies.
Rhodes also has leading academics in the field of teaching and postgraduate supervision, a model for the rest of the country.
But step outside the campus, and the place looks like a war zone.
Under one or another vice-chancellor, marches have taken place to the municipal offices to demand that the water gets switched on.
Recently, a major water pump of the municipality was found in Benoni! Go figure.
Even the guest house environment looks like a hovel. The (partial) password Alwayson@ is a lie; it was off most of the night, which meant I could not do my academic work that requires talking to research teams around the world across time zones.
Two dogs watched as I ate breakfast and I was tempted to toss them the undercooked pork sausage.
When you walk on the old wooden floors, the creaking spreads across the adjacent rooms.
I could hear couples snoring through the wooden walls and, fortunately, those were the only human sounds within earshot.
Here’s the thing. Undergraduates do not only come to university for lectures and laboratories. They also come for that special experience of a first degree: life in and around campus.
They are more likely to remember sitting in a nearby bar into the early hours and meeting a future life mate while under the influence than the molecular structure of proteins visualised under powerful microscopes.
Millions in revenue would flow into the municipality if only it got its act together by fixing the roads and ensuring clean water on tap and thereby bring back small businesses into the streets of Makhanda.
It is not only the university that would bring parents and friends with their money; it would also be visiting relatives of children in the famous schools dotted throughout the town when there are exhibitions or valedictories or matric balls.
It is such a simple formula for the revitalisation of both campus and community that exists in symbiosis, if only those corrupt and incompetent local government officials did their bloody jobs.
The place is ripe for Zille 2.0 once she finishes the expected mayoral job in Johannesburg.
The hapless ANC is that gift that keeps on giving. While the chattering classes debate the efficiency versus justice dilemmas posed by Helen Zille and remind the former mayor/premier of her “refugee” comments from years ago, ordinary people could not care a stuff: just fix the place, giving us clean water and eliminate the potholes.
Why has the ANC, out of pure self-interest, not fixed Makhanda?
I asked a senior ANC leader. There is no political drive to do this. It could, but it won’t.
There are too many interests to protect and neither the long-suffering community of Makhanda nor the frustrated citizens of Rhodes matter enough for a disinterested political party.
Why not go it alone? I asked my dinner guests. There were some efforts along those lines, said a senior university official, but there are municipal approvals required along the way and those are not easily obtained by any group external to the municipality.
After all, there are jobs to protect, tenders to procure, and looting to proceed.
If you want to understand why the ANC will never again win a straight electoral majority at a national level, come to Makhanda.
That Rhodes University flourishes despite the collapse of the city is testimony to the resilience of our institutions of higher learning.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.