By Benny Mojela
The Makana Residents Association (MRA) held its Annual General Meeting (AGM) at the Amazwi Museum on 17 May. Secretary Tim Bull presented the chairperson’s report, in the absence of the outgoing chair Sally Price-Smith, which focused on the service delivery failures of the municipality.
“I don’t think any of us expected to see the new low of two days off, one day on, water supply ‘normalised’ in Makhanda, although the people of Alicedale have experienced this, and worse for quite some time. Both situations are outrageous and completely unnecessary,” said the report. The report said broken refuse trucks and the nonchalant attitude of the Makana management when it comes to fixing them were another problem.
The MRA needed better public relations and communications with the aim of making more noise and “managing membership and fundraising to enable, in the current climate, civil action and legal action”, the report added.
A new committee was then elected unopposed: Tim Bull (Secretary), Eleanor Louw (Treasurer), and committee members Fleur Way-Jones, Anna-Mare Herselman, Carin Swart, John Bateson, and Alyson Bennett. The AGM said outgoing MRA chairperson Sally Price-Smith had done great work, and also acknowledged committee members Dianne Oosthuizen, Phillip Machanick, and Xolani Simakuhle, who did not stand for re-election.
The AGM also discussed the upcoming merger of the MRA with the Makhanda Business Forum (MBF). The newly merged organisation will be named the Makana Business and Residents Association (MB&RA), a non-profit company that will function as a public benefit organisation. Its new constitution is still being drafted.
Grocott’s Mail caught up with a few members of the MRA after the AGM and asked how the new MB&RA plans to work with township organisations to solve the problems affecting everyone in the town. Outgoing MRA committee member Machanick said, “listening is a good start. I have had connections with the anti-crime group. It’s a question of finding people who are interested in talking cooperation and who don’t feel like we will somehow threaten their position. What this organization has is strength in capabilities. We’ve got retired engineers and academics. What we don’t have is a mass base and we don’t want to take that from anyone – we want cooperation”.
Bull, meanwhile, said the goals of the MB&RA will be “across, water, electricity, rubbish collection, and all those things but the goal of the merger is to have a bigger voice and to pull our resources.” He also said they work with different organizations like churches and the taxi associations. They are also open to working with more people from the township, but it is difficult because of ‘logistics’.
Juan Jonas is an attorney working on the merger of the MRA and MBF. “The merger is to simplify dealing with the two structures because what ends up happening is that the MBF and MRA end up working together on many matters. So the purpose is to narrow down what the two bodies end up doing. The main aim is to create a more efficient structure to run the two organizations. The other reason is to register as a non-profit company to get public benefit organisation status. This will encourage big corporates and big businesses to provide funding for the new structure, because it will have benefits for them,” Jonas said.
Photo: Benny Mojela.
