On the foot-steps of president Zuma

The Prez and Deputy Minister Phaahla flanking Premier Mathale

Yesterday I took day from the hustle and bustle of work and followed the Limpopo crowds to the hitherto corner of South Africa called Muyexe. The attraction being that president Jacob Zuma was in the village of Muyexe to officially launch government`s rural development and land reform programme.

The village of Muyexe is found in the equally unknown town of Giyani in the Mopani district of the Limpopo province. I am wondering whether many know or ever heard of this current flavour of the moment that Muyexe is. Or even the town of Giyani, our Mopani ditrict and better still the Limpopo province.

At times I become delusional and think I am  more well-known than all these entities put together!

That was the case until our intrepid president saw Nkandla in Muyexe and declared during his maiden state of the nation address:

“Working together with our people in the rural areas, we will ensure a comprehensive rural development strategy linked to land and agrarian reform and food security as our third priority…While having drawn the necessary lessons from earlier rural development initiatives, we have choosen the Greater Tzaneen Local Municipality as the first of the pilot projects for the campaign.”

The Minister, the Prez and the Premier

As a result we came to know that the town of Giyani is found in the province of Limpopo and that it was once the capital of the Gazankulu bantustan. Today Giyani is the administrative centre of the Mopani ditrict municipality.

It was in my quest to be where the president and almost everybody in Limpopo was that I found myself in Giyani. I never made to the obviously overcrowded Muyexe village. As for the launch, I would catch it all leisure through the mass media.

As I waited for news to start filtering through I kept myself busy at a local watering-hole, appropriately named Oasis. Some time after lunch the from Muyexe crowd dropped in to shake off the dust from the now famous village.

President and his battery of eminents never made it my way though. No tear, I`ll catch them some other day.

When everybody who matter headed home, I also followed suit. We left behind a hitherto rural community whose dream for a better life for life had been rekindled. Let us now wait and see.