By Anna Majavu The small town of Alicedale, 53 kilometres from Makhanda, is plagued by joblessness, water shortages and leaks, broken streetlights, a rising rate of crime, toxic sewage leaks, and a shortage of municipal workers to fix the problems and managers to oversee the workers. The town is the only place in Makana Municipality that has an independent ward councillor, Vuyani Nesi. He left the ANC to stand as an independent candidate in 2021 and won the ward. But activists on the ward committee for Ward 14, some of whom are former political prisoners from the anti-Apartheid struggle, say…
Author: Anna Majavu
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By Anna Majavu Members of the Anti-Crime group were not happy with this Grocott’s Mail journalist’s initial reporting on a murder case in which the accused were a leader of Makhanda’s Anti-Crime group and three alleged Anti-Crime supporters. The murder trial was set to run from 18 – 20 September in the Makhanda Magistrate’s court but could not start on 18 September because of an electricity outage affecting the court. On 19 September, the three-day trial was postponed. The case has been postponed to 20 – 22 October for trial. While interviewing the group’s attorney, Advocate Charles Stamper, inside the…
By Anna Majavu The Makana Residents’ Association (MRA) has called on residents of Makhanda to report toxic smoke from a giant five-day municipal dumpsite fire to the Centre for Environmental Rights. Anna-Maré Herselman, MRA membership officer, said the MRA wanted all affected residents to report the environmental violation to the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER) and send the MRA a copy of their reference number. The Cape Town-based CER maintains a national log of environmental violations that it submits to government departments. “Section 24 of the constitution provides that everyone has a right to an environment that is not harmful…
High up on a Makhanda hill, past Mary Waters, and just before Extension 10, the neglected community of Hooggenoeg lives with constant sewage leaks. Community activist Berend Walters spends much time unblocking municipal drains with his steel rods so that the sewage does not overflow into the community. When the sewage is blocked up in the municipal pipeline, it spurts up and out of residents’ toilet bowls and the domestic drains in their yards, even if they keep these clear. Walters and other residents of Hooggenoeg have also resorted to digging channels around their homes for situations where a sudden…
By Anna Majavu Makhanda’s residents and opposition political parties are inundating community social media pages and WhatsApp groups with complaints about a rising number of water and sewage leaks in the town, with some leaks said to be years old. Ward Four councillor Geoff Embling of the DA, estimates that 40% of the town’s daily supply of 18 megalitres (million litres) of pumped and treated water is lost to leaks – as much as 7.2 million litres every day. Makana Citizens Front (MCF) secretary Ayanda Kota says the municipality must immediately train unemployed community members as plumbing technicians, and form…
By Anna Majavu The Makhanda High Court Action Committee (MHCAC) has vowed to intensify its campaign to keep the provincial seat of the High Court in Makhanda following last week’s final recommendation that the court must be moved to Bhisho. The pointless move would bring access to justice closer for residents of some parts of Eastern Cape, “but certainly much further away for others”, said the MHCAC. Research by the MHCAC released earlier this year found that if the move went ahead, one-third of Makhanda’s businesses would lose so many customers that they would have to shut down. Makhanda would…
Grocott’s Mail Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism students embarked on a Solidarity Journalism project this week, exploring the impact of the underdevelopment of Alicedale on the people who live there. Academic and researcher into Solidarity Journalism, Anita Varma, describes the practice as taking a stand for dignity and against suffering. Solidarity Journalism is a representation of the structural constraints that prevent oppressed people from resolving social injustice, and is news that includes calls for “collective action against injustice”, Varma says. In the following stories, student journalists Fahdia Msaka, Benny Mojela, and Buhle Andisiwe Made take a look at the Alicedale…
By Anna Majavu Setting up a small business in the creative arts with a useful social purpose is not easy, but it can be very rewarding, as a diverse and inclusive Gauteng publishing house has found. The seven-year-old Ethnikids specialist publishing house recently won R500,000 and business advice for a year in Momentum’s 2023 Big Success for Entrepreneur – Big Success Pitch competition. Khumo Tapfumaneyi and Tina Akuoko founded Ethnikids in 2016 after they became mothers and could not find books in bookstores written in their mother tongues that featured characters who looked like their children. “That’s where we saw…
By Anna Majavu More than 20 high-profile journalists and public figures have slammed the funeral company AVBOB for ruining the memorial service and funeral of the late Makhanda-born public figure, Eusebius McKaiser, by using the sad occasions as marketing events without the permission of McKaiser’s widower, Nduduzo Nyanda or McKaiser’s family. The group released an open letter on 11 July demanding that AVBOB pay reparations for its behaviour at the memorial service in Johannesburg on 6 June and the funeral in Makhanda on 10 June. “We note that AVBOB staff attempted to erect their banners on the Empire Place premises…
By Anna Majavu The Makana Municipality has suspended its Director of Engineering and Infrastructural Services, Asanda Gidana, following several allegations of misconduct, including one allegation that R2.964 million was paid for a water pump for the Howieson’s Poort Dam pump station that was never delivered. In a press statement on 21 June, the municipality said Gidana would be suspended for not longer than three months. Grocott’s Mail reported last week that a confidential Council meeting on 5 June discussed the municipality’s intent to suspend Gidana over the pump, which should never have been paid for before delivery and installation. Despite…