Bluff news from the 1950s – Part 7

In case you missed it, read first:

Bluff News from the 1950s – PART 1
Bluff News from the 1950s – PART 2
Bluff News from the 1950s – PART 3
Bluff News from the 1950s – PART 4
Bluff News from the 1950s – PART 5
Bluff News from the 1950s – PART 6

The 1956 election

ALTHOUGH the election campaign on the Bluff got off to a rocky start, the Bluff wards proved the most keenly contested in Durban, particularly as ratepayer apathy resulted in 18 of the 30 wards being uncontested in the newly enlarged Durban City Council.

When the Bluff Ratepayers’ Association put forward its chairman and vice chairman, Messrs Harry Lewis and JC van Aardt as candidates for the municipal election, they were rejected by 136 to 71 at the AGM held on June 13, 1956. The sitting councillors, Sidney Smith and Spanier Marson, told the meeting it was undemocratic of the association to have sidestepped them without any consultation. The meeting broke up in disarray with one resident declaring that the Ratepayers Association “can go and jump in the bay.”

Controversy continued to dog the early weeks of the campaign. When pharmacist Harry Lewis announced he would run as an independent because many people had urged him to do so, he was promptly challenged to explain who these people were when 136 people at the ratepayers’ AGM had rejected his candidacy (Daily News, July 27, 1956). A short while afterwards Mr HA Mason, a retired businessman, announced he would be standing as an independent. Thus, four candidates – Smith, Marson, Lewis and Mason – contested the Bluff’s two wards.

On the eve of the election the new Bluff Ratepayers chairman, Mr AG Willis, was at pains to point out that the association was not officially endorsing any particular candidate. Nonetheless, he criticised candidates Lewis and Mason for failing to hold public meetings in support of their candidacy. Aside from that, the Daily News municipal reporter noted a high poll was expected on the Bluff and an extremely close result. His prediction proved correct.

Election day, October 3, 1956, saw Mason and Lewis elected in a poll of about 60% in which Sidney Smith lost by just one vote. It was the second time in 18 election campaigns in which he had been involved where he had been defeated by a single vote. Unfazed by the result, he said he had not called for a re-count and accepted that the Bluff wanted change. Smith had had 19 years on the council, which included a term as mayor from 1945 to 1946. His public career also included nine years in the Union Senate and six years in the Natal Provincial Council.

Clarkson Road and Sheffield Grove flooding

The untarred top end of Clarkson Road was reduced to a muddy donga when heavy rains in mid-September 1956 poured through an excavation which had been made for the installation of a large storm-water pipe. The unfortunate owner of a car parked in the lower, tarred end of Clarkson Road found his vehicle almost encased in mud. Council workers had to dig the car out.

The owner of the property at the cul-de-sac end of Sheffield Grove experienced a different problem after that downpour: not only did a lake of water accumulate because of the absence of a storm water drain, but his garden flooded and the top soil was swept away. After repeated complaints, the Council’s response was to give him a free load of top soil (Mercury, September 19 and 26).

Liquor licence refused

Durban Liquor Licensing Board declined an application for a licence for a proposed new £30,000 hotel to be built off Sloane Road above Garvies beach. The Board said the main reason for refusing the application was that the site was unsuitable (Mercury, November 1, 1956). Of significance in this case is that site suitability is usually the call of the town planning department.

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