Opinion
Tariff increases in Westonaria are too much
If these rates are implemented, we will be in big trouble financially.
• Westonaria concerned resident writes:
The tariff increases as proposed by the Westonaria Local Municipality are ridiculous.
Westonaria residents consist of the working class, pensioners and the unemployed.
We are not rich and cannot afford these vast increases.
Most residents are unaware of what these increases entail and that on its own is a problem.
If these rates are implemented, we will be in big trouble financially.
My house was built in 1975 and it is already a financial burden.
If implemented, my rates will increase from R678 to R1856 per month and that is ridiculous.
I cannot keep up.
On 14 June 2014 one great struggle heroine, Nomaka Mbeki, was laid to rest in her poor village of Ngcingwana in Idutywa. Her name Nomaka is a derivative of the Afrikaans word “maak”, meaning to be tame. She was tame only to the truth and good, but openly hostile to lies and evil. She had a revolutionary and scholarly husband in Oom Gov, but that didn’t define who she was. Her son was a President, but her life had no trace of anything presidential. Her other son is a political economist, but she did not ride on the glory of her son. She refused to be dressed in borrowed robes, and worked hard to be an activist and intellectual in her own right. That’s what it means to be humble. Not to forget Oom Gov’s own humility; on his release from Robben Island, he chose to live a humble life in a depressed flat complex in New Brighton in PE. He deliberately stayed away from the deserved limelight and shunned the dubious honour of belonging to a political royalty. Much to the disappointment of some of his comrades, he insisted that he be buried in an old, poor and neglected Veeplaas Cemetery in Zwide, Port Elizabeth. Correctly so, the Mbeki family opposed Oom Gov’s exhumation and “reburial” in a museum. Thomas Sankara I think is smiling in his grave that there are great leaders who passed his character-testing exam in flying colours. Oom Gov and MaMbeki ran a good race. But the sad question to be asked is: Are they the last lot of the generation who lived and died humble? Indeed may their soul rest in peace….