Gonubie’s falling apart but councillor has a plan
Dilapidated roads a priority and cleaning up for tourists
Gonubie’s boardwalks are crumbling, roads are collapsing, the potholes are horrendous, bush is encroaching across walkways and its bird sanctuary has “gone to the dogs”.
There is a lot of work for DA ward 29 councillor Andre Swart, but the former chairperson of the local ratepayers’ association says he is up to it.
Swart, who has lived in Gonubie for 23 years, said the seaside boardwalk’s planks were falling off.
He said “inebriated youngsters” were helping the decline by kicking out the slats holding together the handrails.
He said the slats needed to be replaced with sturdier beams running horizontally from post to post.
Valerie Knoetze, chairperson of the Gonubie Ratepayers’ Association (GRA), agreed that the boardwalk was “always” being vandalised and suggested putting up cameras as a deterrent.
Swart said Gonubie’s roads were “derelict” and littered with tyre-shredding potholes.
“The problem is gravel roads that weren’t completely rehabilitated. They were just tarred over,” said Swart, adding that many of the streets in the suburb were built in the 1980s and 1990s and were reaching the end of their lifespan.
He said with only R14.5m allotted in the BCM budget to Gonubie roads, it would be impossible to fix the roads that needed complete replacing.
“Some of these roads look like dirt roads,” he said, singling out Boundary Road as the worst.
When the Dispatch visited the road it was more of a muddy hole than a tarred road, with small cars struggling to navigate the bend.
Knoetze said Gonubie’s roads were not built with the suburb’s current population size and traffic demands in mind.
She said a jet patcher had been secured but it was not a fix-all solution.
Swart said overgrown bush from Black Rock to Fourth Street needed to be cut back to make space for pedestrians.
He said that there had been talk of a paved walkway for the elderly.
Dolosse were needed to be put along Gonubie Point to Black Rock to break up the erosive action of large storm driven surf. It was not uncommon for the ocean to surge over the road. It happened during the recent equinox and after the 2009 tsunami.
The bird sanctuary was barely operational. Swart said that when he first moved to Gonubie in 1995, the sanctuary “was beautiful, the outlook posts were beautiful, the grass was cut and the gates and fencing were in good condition”.
When the Dispatch visited the sanctuary last week, the gate was locked with a chain and shouts for someone to open went unanswered.
The toilets at the Tidewaters picnic area on the banks of the Gqunube river were in a dilapidated, broken-down state, said Swart.
The Dispatch saw tree branches growing through a ceiling in one toilet block.
Windows were broken and the floor was covered in dirt.
Swart said the situation would negatively affect tourism to the area, and needed to change.
Knoetze encouraged Gonubie ratepayers to attend meetings held on the second Tuesday of every month at 7pm, at the Gonubie Bowling Club.