The year 2012 was tough for most of us in Makana. Grocott’s Mail, as the community newspaper for our area, felt the pain and stress of our readers as we reported on the year’s challenges.
The year 2012 was tough for most of us in Makana. Grocott’s Mail, as the community newspaper for our area, felt the pain and stress of our readers as we reported on the year’s challenges.
It started off with a series of fires in Grahamstown schools – one each at Graeme and PJ Olivier and two at Victoria Girls' High. Fortunately no one was injured in any of those incidents, but to our knowledge there has never been a convincing explanation of how those fires started.
Later in the year, heavy rainfall in large parts of the Cacadu area dominated the pages of this and other newspapers in the region. Although we reported on record rainfalls in the Makana area, again we were lucky, as there were no casualties.
We devoted a large chunk of our reporting resources to monitoring the municipality’s performance because City Hall is central to the well-being of our community. The municipal budget of close to R400 million is a massive amount of money for a small community such as ours, yet there are serious challenges when it comes to service-delivery. We are aware of numerous water outages, power cuts and potholes in the road, so we always tried our best to find out how the local authorities were dealing with this crumbling infrastructure.
Grocott’s Mail also reported on municipal budgets, Auditor General Reports, the firing of the chief financial officer and the termination of the municipal manager’s contract. We do our best to keep the residents of Makana informed about what is happening in the municipality – but our efforts are often frustrated by a secretive council that is patently reluctant to share information.
We have, however, welcomed a key new figure in the municipality – infrastructure and technical services director, Thembinkosi Myalato, who has made a concerted effort to be frank and open with this newspaper. We have appreciated his constructive attitude and genuine effort at being transparent. If only the other members of the local leadership would take on this engaging attitude, the public would be much better informed.
The newsroom of Grocott’s Mail suffered a terrible loss in June this year when our dear friend and colleague, Thembeni Plaatjie passed away in a Port Elizabeth hospital. His loss was deeply felt, as he had become a hard-working and valuable member of this newspaper.
We are now, at the end of the year experiencing a different, lighter type of loss as two of our staff members are moving on.
Michael Salzwedel, web editor for the past three years is pursuing his career in Johannesburg. He has done a fantastic job setting us on our way to convergence with Grocott’s Online and GHT Now and is now ready to take a different path.
Desiree Schirlinger, also known as Driving with Desi, is also returning to the big city after making a fantastic contribution to this newspaper with camera and keyboard. We miss her already.
We hope you’ll rejoin us next year for what we are sure will be a busy 12 months – and remember that if you want to know what is happening in Makana, there is only one place to look.
Thank you and – from all the staff at Grocott’s Mail – have a fabulous festive season.
