Author: Sue Maclennan

Charity boost for Grahamstown SPCA Animal charity champions Candice Owen and Sashay Bates Saturday 9 December handed over 115 goodie packs to the Grahamstown SPCA – a valuable boost for the organisation which runs on public donations. The handover at the SPCA’s Waainek premises took place in a dusty wind that blew away words, flung twigs off trees and put paid to the SupUrban pop-up crew’s Christmas Market. Animal loving Grahamstown residents handed over 25 gift boxes for cats, 55 for dogs, 17 kitten boxes and 18 puppy boxes. Each box contains five compulsory items and a sixth optional one…

Friends, family and neighbours have rallied to support elderly Grahamstown residents Vernon Marais and Jacobus “Koekoe” Jonker who were robbed at their Belmont Valley home yesterday 3 January. Jonker was so brutally beaten that he lost consciousness and is recovering in hospital. Marais is partly paralysed as the result of a stroke and can’t speak. He wasn’t injured but friends say it’s clear that he’s traumatised by the terrifying ordeal. The men live on a smallholding at the town end of Belmont Valley. On the strip between the disused railway line and the Bloukrans River, they have created a garden…

Five babies were born at Settlers Hospital on New Year’s Day. Grocott’s Mail caught up with some of the little ones and their moms to celebrate new life, and a new year.

Lifelong Grahamstown resident Una Levey passed away this morning – a day after turning 100 and meeting the youngest member of the family A day after she turned 100, forging her own link in the chain of a family whose extraordinary history in this town dates back before 1820, lifelong Grahamstown resident Una Maud Levey passed away early this morning. Celebrating her birthday with her at the frail care centre at Brookshaw Home yesterday, 27 December 2017, were her nephew Peter Levey and his Tshwane family – making an unusual gathering of four generations of Leveys in one room. To…

Distraught neighbours were too late to save a young man from being burnt to death in his home last weekend, and powerless to remove his body from flames that scoured the main bedroom where he was sleeping before tearing apart the rest of the house. Ncame Street, Joza resident Nkosinathi Jacobs said around 9.30pm Saturday night 16 December he’d heard an explosion and had gone outside to look. “I looked and it was just a fog of smoke,” Jacobs said. It was so thick it was hard to even see where it was coming from but Jacobs soon realised his…

Makana Municipality has appealed to the public to assist in identifying and reporting illegal dumpers, after truckloads of builders’ rubble were found dumped in a pristine natural area outside Grahamstown last weekend. Peter Bailey, who farms on the Southwell Road, said it ruined his weekend when he made the discovery last Thursday. Bailey drives around with buckets and a broom in the back of his bakkie, and picks up litter wherever he goes. “I can’t just leave it,” he says. “It’s such a beautiful area and I love it. I hate to see people mess it up.” He travels the…

Public servants are required to be ethical and transparent, Makana Mayor Nomhle Gaga said, addressing a packed City Hall at an event organised by the Office of the Premier to mark International Anti-corruption Day on Thursday 7 December. “Combating Corruption all starts with the individual,” Gaga said in her welcoming speech, assuring local residents that she would lead by example in the fight against corruption. A large contingent of provincial and local police, led by the SAPS marching band, along with members of the public had made there way there on foot, all the way from the Shoprite taxi rank.…

One of the four men accused of murdering Grahamstown man Thembelani Qwakanisa in october last year has last week pleaded to the lesser count of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm. Thembani Onceya represented by attorney Henry Charles of Legal Aid SA, Akhona Onceya (Viwe Mqeke from Mqeke Attorneys), Simamkele Theron Onceya (advocate Charles Stamper) and Mzwanele Degree Maki (advocate JockMcConnachie) all pleaded not guilty in the High Court in Grahamstown to murdering Qwakanisa, whose body was found lying in Zion Dam in Extension 6 in tied in a carpet and a blanket on 5 October 2016. Maki,…

Last Friday’s Special Council Meeting at the City Hall was so packed with extraordinary developments and announcements that a proposed increase in Makana’s salary budget of close to R370 000 almost went under the radar. The meeting came just a few days before the shock announcement that alongside the gang of municipalities whose electricity Eskom would be rationing starting next Friday, 30 municipalities would also have their water throttled because of debts to water boards and the Department of Water and Sanitation. Makana’s electricity supply is for now secured. So is our water supply – administratively if not physically. Both…