WHERE HAVE ALL THE QUAINT KOUGA VILLAGES GONE?

This earnest appeal to save our Kouga towns in the format of this press release was compiled by the DA caucus of Kouga Municipality. All parties are welcome to respond using the Comments facility on this blog.

The JBRA is strictly neutral with respect to political parties, but is happy to publish contributions from any source that are related to our district.

Every verse of Pete Seeger’s now famous folk song: “Where have all the flowers gone” ended with the words: “Oh, when will they ever learn?”  

There can be no doubt that conditions in our once quaint Kouga villages have degenerated alarmingly during the period the ANC have had control of the Kouga municipality. After 12 years of misrule the residents of the villages in the Kouga Municipality like St Francis Bay, Humansdorp, Jeffreys Bay and Hankey are justified in asking: “When will they ever learn?”

What has happened to St Francis Bay, the world renowned village that Leighton Hulett created so uniquely and masterfully, is shameful. The value of investment in these properties is now suffering from the total neglect and degradation of roads and verges. It is relevant to ask what happened to the financial reserves and the sound infrastructure inherited from St Francis Municipality in the year 2001? Why were the St Francis fire services permitted to deteriorate to the present situation in a high risk fire zone? Why are most of Sea Vista’s newly built RDP houses below street level and thus constantly flooded, gravel streets washed away and storm water system fully blocked?

“When will you ever learn ANC Kouga Council?”

The beautiful town of Humansdorp once the “capital” hub of the business and administration for the whole of Kouga and Koukamma, has been allowed to go to total ruin.  The functional and aesthetic Main Street is in a filthy state with open manholes that are generally used as rubbish bins, and streets and pavements in urgent need of repairs. The caravan park has been downgraded to the status of an overnight camp for labourers, while service delivery in suburbs like Arcadia and Kruisfontein is deemed totally inadequate by the inhabitants. The sewerage system is a huge health risk with inhabitants living a few meters away from the unsecured sewerage plant in Kwanomzamo, where children have drowned in the past.

Once again the ANC Kouga Council must respond to Humansdorp residents: “When will you ever learn?”

The ANC regime in Kouga also needs to be held accountable for the decay of the town of Hankey where once historical landmarks like Dr Phillip’s grave; the unique Yellowwoods caravan park, the Phillip’s tunnel; and the old sun dial; are either completely destroyed or are in a sad state of decay. Even the more recent Sarah Baartman’s grave site in Hankey needs attention.

Jeffreys Bay is yet another example where decay set in after the beautiful tourist resort was compelled to surrender its autonomous municipal status in 2001. The ANC regime in the Kouga municipality needs to give answers as to why the infrastructure was allowed to deteriorate to a level where the Waste Water works does not comply with the specifications of the department of Water Affairs, and the quality of drinking water supplied by the boreholes is unacceptable. The public toilets in the down town areas are a disgrace while the central business area, that attracts thousands of tourists annually, has been allowed through neglect to degenerate and become a haunt for the many menacing and unofficial car guards. The meagre municipal financial support to the tourist offices in Jeffreys Bay, St Francis Bay, Hankey and Humansdorp,  is also negligent as was the decision to give notice to the Ski Club to evacuate their premises.

Oh, will they ever learn?

Or is it more appropriate for Kouga to demand a regime change?

Don't blame whites for failures of the ANC

Rhoda Kadalie

17 August 2011

Rhoda Kadalie says Desmond Tutu's wealth tax call is racist and irresponsible

Tutu Wake Up and Smell the Coffee!

On Friday, the Cape Argus (12 August) carried, yet again, one of Archbishop Tutu's inane rants that white people be subjected to a wealth tax. Why would he say this when white people already bear the brunt of most taxation in South Africa?
Secondly, he said that had this been imposed at the time of the Truth Commission, it would have made a difference, which itself is an admission that the TRC failed with reparations, which if the truth be told, was never its priority. The Commissioners closed the TRC with a whopping severance package which, given their mission and failure to achieve it, was a scandalous way to end the TRC.
The TRC ranks as one of the world's best efforts at reconciliation, when in fact it failed spectacularly to achieve social justice, compensation and reconciliation. It was nothing but a show trial promising absolution to those who confess while exposing the pain and indignity black people suffered at the hands of the apartheid regime.
Today apartheid has been defeated, yet the ANC government fails to take responsibility for its failure to improve education, for reducing poverty, for creating jobs, for effective service delivery, and for crime prevention. Tutu's rant is tantamount to blaming white people for the failure of this government.
As usual, the Cape Argus continually gives the Arch headlines when on page three a much more worrying report should have received prominence. In the report, Premier Helen Zille reveals that more than 50 percent of primary school children at South Peninsula tested positive for drugs.
This is the tip of the iceberg and points to a country that has failed its youth, resulting in fatherless households, gross youth unemployment, high rates of criminality, and an education system that is one of the worst in the world. The levels of drug abuse at schools are shocking and account for the low levels of education reached by coloured kids on the Cape Flats.
If SA ranks 130^th out of 139 countries regarding our education system, then people like Tutu who keeps receiving international awards should focus his gaze where it matters and should stop singling out white people as the problem in this country, and Israel as the problem in the world.
For eleven years Impumelelo has been awarding innovative projects that improve the quality of life of the poor. Hundreds of white people who have been ejected from the system through racism and affirmative action have reinvented themselves and are doing the most amazing work in the non-profit and NGO sectors. They run income-generation projects, they command vast armies of volunteers who tackle the HIV/AIDS and TB pandemics, and they are responsible for vast pockets of social development that the ANC government should be doing.
I can give facts and figures to prove it, not least to point to white business men and women who put money into the education of black youth unlike the majority of the black elite who enjoy their ill-gotten wealth with rank consumerism.
Impumelelo shows equally, that ordinary black people run an incredible range of development projects in both urban and rural settings, especially in areas where government has failed and do nothing. But this is mostly in the NGO sector. Tutu, wrongly, keeps on targeting white South Africa, when black business does very little to contribute to the growth and development of this country.
To demand a wealth tax from whites, firstly is racist. Secondly it is irresponsible, when Julius Malema allegedly received a R51 million tender through nefarious means. To demand a wealth tax from white people when the ANC government gives R2.5 billion of South African taxes to King Mswati 111, dictator and polygamist, beggars belief.
To demand a wealth tax from whites when the recent Mail & Guardian reveals that President Jacob Zuma's son-in-law, Lonwabo Sambudla, is allegedly involved in a R1 billion tender for new government office space, is obscene. The ruling elite continues to profit from taxpayers' money with ruthless and unashamed greed.
The time has come for Archbishop Tutu to recognise SA for what it is and how he as a leader, together with those who claim the anti-apartheid moral high ground, have failed to create a democracy that cannot provide the most basic of socio-economic rights to black people.
This article first appeared in Die Burger.