Berea’s seven social ills
My list of the seven social ills that prevail in our society which are slowly tearing at our quality of life and causing degeneration in our city suburbs.
DERELICT homes. Abandoned properties. Absentee landlords. Vagrants. Beggars. Prostitutes. Crime. This is my list of Berea’s seven social ills. Entwined like strands of string each feeds the other and together they give rise to a social rot that is steadily contaminating neighbourhoods and communities.
Not a week goes by where our reporters don’t receive a call, e-mail or BBM message from irate Berea residents who have legitimate complaints about any one, or combinations of those seven ills. This week’s lead story is another in a growing pile of stories we have written where an abandoned property in an well-established suburb has succumbed to the rot and is adversely affecting its neighbours. These properties attract the homeless and the hopeless and with them come filth, disease, crime and despair.
We have written ad nauseum about abandoned properties where absentee landlords seem to live with not a care or thought of the property they have a financial investment in. We have inspected once magnificent properties that are now home to vagrants and criminal elements; properties that are covered in litter, debris and human waste. We have reported on the slow decay in our parks, shady lanes and public buildings and spaces. We have asked questions but the hallowed corridors of city hall have provided no real answers.
We also report this week on the adverse affect another of our social ills – prostitution – is having on legitimate businesses. Customers are harassed and propositioned as they run a gauntlet of discarded condoms, filth and waste when visiting businesses unfortunate to be in proximity to illegal brothels and public spaces where these working girls gather.
Businessman Graeme Kerr says the area around Che Guevara Road is degenerating rapidly, he talks of the two illegal brothels trading openly and he fears the quality of the area is being torn down. Residents whose properties neighbour the abandoned property in Percy Osborn Road in Morningside which is home to squatters, prostitutes, vagrants and thieves, say they are sick and tired of complaining to authorities who have failed to take any action. One cannot deny that these elements detrimentally affect property values, quality of life and business turnovers. The complainants have legitimate reason to be fearful.
There is no overnight cure to the ills that prevail our society. The platitudes and trite promises from city officials and police do little to instil confidence that decisive action will be taken against perpetrators. Instead, we are told of long-term plans to renew, refurbish and rehabilitate areas of the city where the rot has spread and taken hold. Ambitious plans. Plans that on paper have merit. Pipe dream plans. Outlandish Plans. Costly plans to be shouldered by ratepayers.
And while they sit in committee rooms making plans, the rot spreads.
Most of Berea’s social ills can be blamed on Land Use Management’s failure to enforce the by-laws. Under Soobs Moonsammy’s watch, the Berea has become a hell for residents and a haven for criminals and vagrants. Crime is up 136% and drug dealing, prostitution, litter, defecating in the streets, illegal buildings (many of them eyesores), corrupt building inspectors, illegal destruction of unique heritage buildings, destruction of trees, traffic congestion (much of it generated by illegal businesses she has failed to close down)is the order of the day, so it’s no wonder ratepayers are abandoning their homes for gated estates elsewhere (as Moonsammy claims in a recent newspaper article). But it is not only residents who are leaving (those who can afford it) but also popular restaurants and much-needed investors because the signal coming out of her department is that it condones illegal businesses run out of residences, condones the destruction of a protected ‘listed’ houses, ignores unscrupulous owners who build without approved plans and that it views complaints by ratepayers as “an entrenched colonial mind-set” to be disregarded with contempt.
Her serial failure to manage our environment has sent a message to criminals that ‘anything goes’ – and this is not only bad news for residents but it is also the death knell for investment in our city.
Ratepayers should demand her immediate resignation before all that is unique and charming about Durban is lost forever.