What you see is KFC
The horrible little hut on Allen Street is now complete in all its garishness and incompatibility. The building is illegal, but possession is nine points of the law.
What you see is KFC
The horrible little hut on Allen Street is now complete in all its garishness and incompatibility. The building is illegal, but possession is nine points of the law.
Will the law now take its course or does Makana have so many other more urgent priorities that the report of the building inspector will be neatly filed and ultimately forgotten? If this creates a precedent one does not even want to think further.
Perhaps, when the hullabaloo has died down Rob Beer, the property developer, can lean on KFC and persuade them to redecorate in a more appropriate fashion.
They have had masses of free saturation level publicity already – everybody knows about KFC in Allen Street. Yet if they should decide to blend in with the historic Grahamstown environment, they will get another dollop of free publicity, but this time it will all be highly favourable.
Making the cut?
The threat to cut electricity supplies to the biggest culprits in the bad debts department fizzled out like a damp squib. They did not pay and they did not get their electricity cut either. One has to look at the practical politics of the situation.
To punch somebody higher up on the corporate ladder is inviting personal disaster. Makana is small fry compared with Bhisho or Pretoria.
Where the wind blows
Dr Garth Cambray was invited to speak to the committee on the proposed windfarm. Fears and reservations which members had expressed at a previous meeting were allayed.
The wind farm will not be environmentally unfriendly and the electricity produced will enter the Eskom grid at the old Grahamstown power station. Makana gets first call.
That is the nature of electricity. Eskom is planning to buy electricity from local producers at a price which makes their enterprises financially worthwhile. We should go for it.
Straying away
Stray animals can be a nuisance in Grahamstown particularly when they appear on the N2 or George Street where they are a dangerous traffic hazard.
The Makana Stockowners’ Association has applied to graze their cattle on the commonage South of Grahamstown. This has wisely been turned down.
Imagine herds of cattle crossing the N2 twice daily and then probably negotiating the Belmont valley and Port Alfred Road!
But the commonage East of Grahamstown is overgrazed yet there are people who sincerely believe they have a cultural right to keep cattle.
A contentious and possibly explosive human rights issue. The post for collecting stray animals and taking them to the municipal pound is once again vacant and to be put out to tender. Nobody wants the job.
Who wants to be in the running for being the most unpopular man about town? Pick up a stray cow and take it to the pound and the owner has to pay a minimum of R800 to get it back. This is a fair price however consider the cost of collecting, feeding, watering, a veterinary check, and a secure enclosure.
A few final snippets
• Plans were passed for a milk parlour for the goat farms. Dream away.
• Who is supposed to pick up the carcasses of dead animals on public property? Don’t know.
• The SAPS application to have the Liquor Act clarified to mean closing time means everybody out has reached the White Paper stage. Good news. The bad news is that dangerous contact crimes, breaking in and large theft leaves our police little or no time for irritant crimes like noise pollution.
• The Economic Development, Tourism and Heritage meeting was postponed due to the lack of a quorum, but it was held later.
• Two successive Budget and Treasury meetings have been cancelled because of no quorum. How can you run an organisation if you do not check the books regularly? Scandalous.
• Horror over the Auditor General’s Report on Makana. In the white heat of the moment people can jump to very wrong conclusions. The GRA will give its cool and considered judgement in the next newsletter. Clive Whitford is the chairperson of the Grahamstown Residents’ Association
