STELLENBOSCH, South Africa, Dec 20 (AFP) - An ageing street trader with slumped shoulders sat on a sidewalk as she watched members of South Africa's ruling party trickle into a hall to talk about helping the poor.
"I stay in a shack, I have no money, no work, nobody helping me. I'm not saying it's because of them, but I want them to try more to help people," Margaret Ludidi told AFP.
She was one of the many hawkers trying to cash in on a five-day conference of the African National Congress, where discussions focus on poverty alleviation and job creation.
Outside the conference hall, a garbage collector glanced up at the rows of shiny vehicles in the parking area, remarking dryly: "There is a massive amount of money driving around in town this week."
Eight years after the ANC came to power in the country's first elections since the end of the apartheid regime, almost half the nation is still living in poverty, earning less than 600 rand (66 dollars) a month.
The population is also ravaged by HIV/AIDS, and unemployment stands around 30 percent.
The ANC gathered this week in the picturesque university town of Stellenbosch, northeast of Cape Town, to review the five years since its last national conference, but also to look ahead to the next general election due in 2004.
The party is regarded as certain to win that poll.
But it is intensely aware of the fact that the majority of its traditional supporters are still struggling to survive.
"We have no doubt that we will be returned, but we also realise how much we have to speed up change because there is an emergency," former ANC deputy secretary general Thenjiwe Mtintso said at the conference.
Alliance partners to the ANC, the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, have publicly criticised the government's macro-economic policies, accusing it of alienating the poor.
The ANC, which led the anti-apartheid struggle, re-positioned itself ideologically at this week's conference.
It adopted an official definition which stated: "The ANC as is a disciplined force of the left, organised to conduct consistent struggle in pursuit of the interests of the poor."
The ANC leaders once again pledged to fight poverty in post-apartheid South Africa and promised to slash unemployment by half by 2014.
But when delegates packed up in high spirits Friday, they left behind hundreds of disillusioned supporters, living in an impoverished township a few kilometres (miles) outside Stellenbosch.
Khayamandi means "pleasant home" in the Xhosa language, and although it is a friendly place, residents might disagree with the name of their township.
Its streets are lined with makeshift shacks and small houses, boys play on the tar, admiring passing vehicles, and young people gather in groups in the streets, listening to music or just standing around and chatting.
"Most people here don't have jobs. Almost everyone who finished school with me could not find jobs," said 23-year-old Kenny Mpemnyama, who works in his father's shop, adding with a sigh: "I need a real job."
Mapaseko Setona is a 20-year-old and works as a hairdresser in the afternoons to pay her way through school.
She also supports her little brother since her father and his wife do not have any income.
"My big dream is to go to London. I know I will do it one day," she said.
But for now, and for long after the ANC visited the town to discuss her future, Setona will have to continue braiding hair to put food on the table.
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