GRA membership on the rise
Membership of the Grahamstown Residents’ Association (GRA) has almost doubled since last year’s annual general meeting from about 500 to over 900 this year. There were only 35 paid-up members at the 2015 AGM. GRA Chairperson, Philip Machanick announced the good news at the Association’s 2017 annual meeting held at City Hall on Wednesday evening.
The 2017 AGM was a relatively sedate affair compared to last year’s edition as the GRA under a new Committee determined to take a more proactive role in improving living conditions in Grahamstown. The 47 members present were just enough for a quorum and for reasonable discussion before changes could be made to the constitution.
Machanick presented highlights of his chairperson’s report to the meeting, as the full report had been circulated earlier and hard copies were freely available.
He noted that the recruitment drive and the increase in voluntary payments by a significant number of members had made it possible to hire a parttime administrator.
Advertisements for the position had already gone out and short-listing for the position was due to start within a few days.
The new administrator will be based at the recently established office in the old Gadra Advice Centre near the old railway station. This is an ideal location as it is reasonably accessible from both Grahamstown East as well as West.
As a large part of the GRA’s activities include working with the Makana Municipality, Machanick regretted to say that the Acting Municipal Manager, Riana Meiring had taken ill and was not likely to be back at work in the near future.
This is a significant setback for Makana as Meiring has always worked well with the GRA and has made a concerted effort to take the concerns of the Association into consideration.
Machanick made it clear that the GRA had absolutely no intention of doing the municipality’s work, but would rather work with local officials in their efforts to better serve to the local community. He acknowledged that there have been improvements in the municipality’s performance, most notably in dealing with water outages and communications.
There has been some progress in plans for the urgent repair of provincial roads that run through the town. The GRA is engaging with the Eastern Cape government, which is responsible for the maintenance of national roads, about the dangerous state of these roads which include Somerset and Beaufort Streets. The provincial government is already committed to surfacing the entire road between Grahamstown and Fort Beaufort.
The most serious concern about Makana Municipality is its long-term financial viability. In negotiations with Eskom, the municipality agreed on a plan to repay outstanding amounts to the national electricity provider so that Grahamstown no longer faces punitive power cuts.
There are however concerns about the municipality’s ability to pay Amatola Water and other creditors. Makana currently has a higher level of debt than at any time since the start of the Administration in 2014. Debt has increased from about R80 million in March last year to R127 million by the end of February 2017.
Machanick explained that there are two key obstacles undermining Makana’s viability. The first is the relatively small tax base, meaning that there are not enough people and businesses who are paying for municipal services; and the second issue relates to past financial mismanagement. He said that it is difficult to attract more investments in the face of poor infrastructure maintenance.
The main business of the evening concerned minor modi- fications of the Association’s constitution and the election of committee members. The amendments were approved with minimal discussion and the new constitution as well as other relevant documents are available online at: http://grahamstownresidentsassociation. co.za/.
The meeting voted to retain Tim Bull as Secretary and Samantha Leighton as Treasurer. The following members were elected to the Committee: Philip Machanick, Fleur Way-Jones, Richard Alexander, Steven Lang, Willem Coetzer, Ashia Nkontsa, Ed Gaybba, Sally Price-Smith and Mohammed Moorad. The new Committee will elect a chairperson at its first meeting.
Hancu Louw, representing MobiSAM, encouraged residents to make use of its fault reporting service. MobiSAM works with the municipality to report on service delivery problems and to distribute information that might be useful to residents. Grahamstown residents can register at www.mobisam. net. They’re doing a great job. Principal of Nombulelo High School, Nicci Hayes, the guest speaker at the GRA meeting, made an impassioned plea for Grahamstown residents to have a better understanding of the difficulties facing her school. She said that it is so much harder for township schools to do basic teaching activities because of the lack of resources.
As an example, Hayes recalled that previously, she had worked at Victoria Girls' High School where a biology teacher might take her pupils to the Botanical Gardens in one of the school’s buses, even though the Gardens are less than a kilometre away.
Her current school, Nombulelo High, does not have a school bus, so they have to pay for taxis – R20 per child – an amount the school does not have.
Most teachers and parents at her school do not have cars, so if a child falls, they have to call an ambulance and probably take the pupil to a clinic where she might have to wait the whole day. This means that a relatively minor injury can cause a pupil or a teacher to lose a day’s schooling.
Hayes criticised the media for not understanding the difficulties facing a township school when compared to a former model ‘C’ school.
She said the media were quick to paint township schools as inefficient and staffed by lazy teachers who were always waiting for an opportunity to go on strike.
She said that such a portrayal is simply not true because the staff members at Nombulelo High work extremely hard under very challenging conditions.
Hayes asked Grahamstown residents to think about what it means to teach in under-resourced schools and appealed to the meeting to build bridges. She said the GRA would do well to use the school community to broaden its base in areas where it currently has very little representation.