The old rainbow from ’95 is shabby – torn by man’s inhumanity to man
We need to reconnect with our humanity - we have been running a poor show of late.
Someone said the other day, while we were watching the Boks play England, ‘Gee, you must have seen and covered a whole of s%$^ stories in this area over the years?’
As the Boks lifted the trophy, it was a case of reflection. Back to 1995 when South Africa last won the Rugby World Cup. South Africa was a gentler place then. We believed in heroes and rainbows. Struggle heroes and old nationalists did not seem to mind sitting down for a cuppa and discussing the intricacies of working together to get – well, in this case – the newly formed Endumeni Municipality (which cobbled together Dundee, Glencoe and the hamlet of Wasbank) to actually work.
Like South Africa, it did work – for a bit. Then we kinda got ugly with each other. It started at the municipality, I guess, with the need to juggle tenders to favour the politically connected for pure greed. Pals gave pals jobs at the ‘Kremlin’ with eye-watering packages and bonuses nog al, in a dorp with six traffic lights.
At one stage the Municipal Manager, if you include his heavy bonus (performance or not), was said to be earning not much less, salary wise, than the President of the country. And so things went downhill.
The by-laws went to pot along with the cops who simply refused or did not know how to implement them. Residents just grew gatvol and whatever Council was voted in, the same thing would just happen all over again. Kinda Groundhog Day on speed.
Councillors whose livelihoods depend on being in power, fought and literally died to keep their positions. The little people whom the old NP denied housing too also found themselves out in the cold, this time by democracy, as the greed train overlooked them and new RDP houses were handed to the politically connected, to be rented out and even turned into taverns.
SASSA continues to feed 17-million monthly – triple the tax base – as poverty grinds away. The economy slid into a morass as South Africa slid off the world stage.
Endumeni’s rates are untenable. A home valued at R1,8-million in Mossel Bay attracts rates of around R600. Here, a property valued at the same price coughs up around R2 500 a month in rates – for little in return as there is no hot asphalt to fix the potholes. Things fall apart and so do people.
The Dave Yates shooting spree jolted us into a reality that little old Dundee is as drug soaked as any other town. We allowed it. It was an epic tragedy, covered ably by colleague, Byron Pillay.
One wintry Sunday afternoon stands out in my mind. It was July and all the leaves were brown, but the sky was iron blue. A little group of concerned parents, teachers and right-minded residents gathered to discuss what to do next following Yates’ rather tame arrest after a day of mayhem. Protest at the Court to encourage them to grant Yates bail? Protest at the cop shop, because it was them who allowed mainly foreign drug lords to run on the streets? ‘They even sell their evil narcotics to junior school children’, said one school teacher.
The irony was that the little meeting was being watched, less than 100 metres away, by a group of so-called drug runners. They were even in Court when Yates did appear. The group quickly faded away. The deed was done, the dead dealers quickly replaced.
The desperation which beset the town (and the country) led to yet another so-called investment scheme going south. With headquarters in good old Dundee, the Coin-It scheme succeeded in making us famous for probably the wrong reasons. With billions said to be invested in the scheme and with many suddenly not getting their eagerly awaited returns, it was time to sharpen the blades.
There was much denial and a few threats. Investors were accused of committing fraud against Coin-It. The media was blamed for being racist. Again, there was talk of protests but again nothing. Businesses scooped up in a buying frenzy, sold by thirsty locals looking for a quick buck, have soon ended on the scrap heap.
The saddest is the iconic and landmark Royal Country Inn, where staff have allegedly not been paid for months. The counter claim is of course the media’s fault, racism, threats, you name it. But man’s inhumanity to man has been so intense in 2019 that the old rainbow from 1995 is just a shaggy piece of dirty laundry. Pass us a beer, Lofty.
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