Descent into mediocrity

The National Arts Festival could not have come at a worse time for Grahamstown.

The city looks shabbier than ever, as our water reserves approach 20%, portholes make permanent homes in roads, and livestock garden-trashing, defecating, and street-roaming like they too pay rates and taxes.

No wonder the Auditor General’s report on Grahamstown (just out this week), makes for grim reading. Meanwhile Rhodes, for years the mainstay of the city's economic well-being, is also experiencing serious financial and philosophical challenges. It is the above Grahamstown that Fest-goers will visit next week. Be reminded that not even two years ago, Fest CEO Tony Lankester warned about a possible relocation of the artsy jamboree if Grahamstown’s problems persisted. That time, a water crisis was averted just hours before the start of the Festival.

We’ve of course not been immune to the national doom and gloom. Yet, many of our problems are self-inflicted; and their solutions local, not in Pretoria or Cape Town.

Bluntly put, without Rhodes, Fest and the three private schools, Grahamstown is just another dusty little town parasiting off the national teat. To maintain and grow our unique niche requires business skill, not the never-ending political theatrics common elsewhere in South Africa. We have that choice; or the inevitable march into municipal mediocrity.

Simdoesbelievethatevery 100people(richorpoor),must havetheirownmunicipal government.