Has the time come for a more aggressive stance?

 Dr Barry Vosloo, chairman

Over the past few years the JBRPA has deliberately moved away from a confrontational approach and has assumed a more conciliatory style in dealing with the municipality, confident in our belief that it is possible to be assertive without being abrasive.

Dr Barry Vosloo

For example, the JBRPA is on record that, for various reasons, it does not support a rates boycott by its members. The association has also shown that it is happy to acknowledge the good things done by the municipality.

However, the association has also pointed out that it will support more aggressive measures if matters take a turn for the worst.

Sadly, we have come to the conclusion that our moderate approach is not working well.  The time for more robust action has, therefore, come.

We are becoming increasingly impatient for two reasons.

• Firstly, despite the best efforts of Peter Gerber, the municipality has so far failed to respond to a number of members’ complaints on behalf of which the association acted as an intermediary and
• Secondly, a meeting was recently called by the MEC for Local Government and Traditional Affairs to inform the municipality and local ratepayers’ and residents’ associations of the outcome of his department’s investigations into the associations’ complaints about poor municipal service delivery.

However, gross discourtesy was shown by the Mayor, Speaker and Municipal Manager towards the MEC, his officials, and representatives of ratepayers’ and residence associations.

Mayor Robbie Dennis

• The Mayor arrived half an hour after the appointed time of the meeting;
• The Speaker turned up more than an hour late and
• The Municipal Manager did not put in an appearance at all.

(Click HERE to read an earlier report in this regard.)

So, the Mayor’s call on the people of Kouga to “work together with respect for the roles each one of us has been assigned by the communities we serve,” (Our Times, 16 December 2010), takes the breath away. He and his officials clearly do not practice what they preach.

It is worth noting that the association has already formally expressed its solidarity with the St Francis Bay’s Residents'Association efforts to carry out a municipal rates boycott.