Beaches ‘for the poor’ have been neglected

DESPITE letters over a period of eight years to the Cape Argus imploring Patricia de Lille and company to restore the roads and beaches abutting the backyards of people who were banished to the labour dormitories under the dunes in the ’60s, she has cocked a snook and has never ever had the decency to offer any apology.

What really riled me is that she has been boasting about R800 million spent on non-motorised transport, which has turned out to be nothing but a piggy bank at R1 000 a throw.

Motorists of all ages, like myself, are spending millions on transport while the proven seven percent of cyclists with machines, some priced at a few hundred rand each, do not pay a cent by way of licence fees.

The arrogance of Helen Zille in stating that the parking fines should be doubled is not even worthy of my humble contempt.

In the early ’30s my father, who was a delivery boy for Schocks Bottle Store in Wynberg, used to take us to Strandfontein on camping trips. Sadly, these days, those beaches are no longer accessible to that ancient farm today.

What really amazes me is that my people, who were suffering under the Port Jacksons, seem to have become literally immune to the treatment meted out to them by our city’s mothers. Strangely enough, even the black and blue mussels objected to the neglect by staging a suicidal walkout on Belinda Walker’s blue flag beaches when the flag dropped to quarter mast a few weeks ago.

A few years ago, I offered to take Mario Wanza, Tony Ehrenreich and Marius Fransman on a tour of these beaches, but there were no takers.

Please gentlemen, the harrowing plight of our people transcends the conditions of the Uitsig sports field, the causal glass dam or old “Cee Jays” statue on the mountain.

My people are dying a horribly slow death due to the ravages of poverty and hunger and crime while you seem to have forgotten that only “bread and butter” politicking can alleviate some of their sorrow.

My time is fast running out and I have finally decided to do a lone Hyde Park Corner stint in front of our City Hall this Sunday at 3pm with a little demonstration thrown in for free.

If you have nothing better to do, you are welcome. As I do not possess a loud hailer I hope that my vocal chords will last.