Makana Municipality has been mending potholes, clearing rubbish, securing the water supply, servicing the sewers and generally doing the right thing by Grahamstown's guests ahead of the National Arts Festival, which opened on Thursday.
Makana Municipality has been mending potholes, clearing rubbish, securing the water supply, servicing the sewers and generally doing the right thing by Grahamstown's guests ahead of the National Arts Festival, which opened on Thursday.
Accommodation and eating establishments have been polishing their windows and tending their verges.
The town's major players, under the formation of the joint operations committee, have been talking since February about how to make this Festival, with the particular challenges of its time and place, the fabulous success that our visitors expect it to be.
And Grahamstown will pull it off. If only we could achieve this degree of co-operation and single-minded focus on some of the long-running problems our town faces, the things we could do… In many ways it's business as usual for the Grocott's Mail team – it's our job to tell the Grahamstown story, and we think we do that quite well, certainly consistently.
But we love the Festival for the excitement it brings to town, the chance to meet fellow journalists from around the country (and the world), and the chance it allows us to share with our readers fantastic stories and photos, fresh from the home of the biggest festival in Africa.
Grahamstown is still a very divided city – geographically and socially – and within the explosion of colour and sound, there will be angry voices from inside and outside Festival platforms.
Makana Local Municipality's term under the administration of the Province is about to end.
It's been bad – very bad in Makana for a while – but if the financial reports, and programmes to tighten the reins tabled in recent Council meetings are accurate, it does look as if things are turning around.
With so much at stake in next year's local government elections, politicians are pulling out all the stops to also do the right thing by Makana's citizens.
At the opening press conference for the Festival on Wednesday, veteran journalist from the Daily Dispatch Mike Loewe noted the overriding theme of this year's Festival, which is satire, particularly political satire.
"Can the politicians take the heat?" he asked the politicians present.
The answer came not from MEC Pemmy Majodina or Deputy Arts and Culture Minister Rejoice Mabudafhasi, but Festival CEO Tony Lankester.
He said, "In all the years that government departments have been sponsoring the Festival, there has not been a single occasion when any element of programme was under threat from anyone working for the government."
Enjoy Festival – we look forward to meeting you on the streets, and in the shows.
