YEAR IN REVIEW 2023: NEWS
Fishing communities expressed unhappiness at the level and quality of public engagement by Total Energies EP SA (TEEPSA) on its plans to set up production facilities to extract gas from a 12,000km² section of ocean off Mossel Bay. The production right application area is around 100km offshore and stretches from Mossel Bay to St Francis.
Eastern Cape ActionSA provincial leader Athol Trollip introduced the party to Ndlambe residents during a public meeting at the Marina Clubhouse on Monday January 30 2023.
After intermittent, or no supply, high lying areas in Port Alfred at last started to receive water through the municipal supply, after the Rosehill pumps were switched on again.
Respected academic and educationist Professor Ken Ngcoza spoke at Kuyasa Combined School’s30th anniversary celebrations. Meanwhile, the top-achieving school’s head declared their door open to colleagues at neighbouring schools to share their formula for matric success.
The first recipient of a new bursary from Bathurst’s Emzini Lounge, Siyamthanda Saki, said she hoped to be able to do the same for someone in her shoes one day. Emzini Lounge owner Malibongwe Tokwe launched a R5,000 bursary fund that is awarded to the top performing pupil in the area.
With ticket sales just under 8,000, an enthusiastic crowd enjoying performances by 11 artists and 12 DJs, as organiser of the Ecawa Music Festival, Siyabulela Madyo, hailed it as a success.
The departments of education and transport struggled to iron out problems in scholar transport, forcing a group of Klipfontein Primary School pupils to walk 10km to and from school.
Talk of the Town reported on a controversial R45,000 bill from local company Jama Trading for cutting grass at the Marjorie Parrish TB Hospital outside Port Alfred.
Local taxi association Uncedo’s Port Alfred branch met independent transport operators to discuss routes and terms of operation. The taxi association eventually backed down on demands.
There was drama at the Kwanonqubela Community Hall in Alexandria on Tuesday, February 14 when the Public Order Police (POP) unit from East London was called in to end what they described as a hostage situation.
Palaeontologist and Bathurst resident Rob Gess was part of the team that announced the discovery at Waterloo Farm fossil site of a giant killer fish that hunted our ancestors.
Long-serving Rotarian Heather Howard, who dedicated 18 years to Rotary was awarded honorary membership.
Paediatrician Dr Taryn Gaunt and her family were the latest change-makers to move to the
heart of the Sunshine Coast. MARCH
The Makhanda high court set aside a decision by the Ndlambe Municipality that it would not consider or approve any building applications on the Royal Alfred Marina without an environmental impact assessment.
The Global Leading Light Initiatives (GLLI) organisation hosted a send-off event for the Ndlambe teens who were part of the One Team, Two Continents (1T2C) Ambassador Programme, to Chicago, US to embark on a week-long robotics adventure.
Port Alfred’s main clinic was affected by a Nehawu strike.
In a Ndlambe council meeting it was noted that Eskom’s tariff increases of 18.65% for the 2023/2024 financial year would come into effect on Saturday April 1.
Mayor Khululwa Ncumiso said photographs had been received showing municipal vehicles transporting stolen diesel to “customer’s” houses. She called for corrupt officials involved to be exposed.
Long-standing University of the Third Age (U3A) chair Trevor Langley was given a standing ovation by club members for his stewardship when the club held their 2023 AGM at the Don Powis Hall in Settlers Park.
“I still feel myself to be an activist,” former British MP and anti-apartheid activist Peter Hain told journalists in a media briefing after delivering the annual Neil Aggett Memorial Lecture at Kingswood College in Makhanda on March 7 2023.
Electoral Commission vicechair Janet Love was among the VIP speakers at the Electoral Commission of SA’s 2023 launch of its tertiary institutions civic and democracy education youth campaign on Rhodes University’s Steve Biko lawns.
The DA said they were working in all three spheres of government to address water shortages in the country.
Coastal communities were on the lookout for the annual breeding migration of sardines.
An early morning burning barricade on the R72 opposite Kenton-on-Sea’s main entrance was the focal point of destructive protest during the EFF’s planned shutdown on Monday March 20. Several shops remained closed but many businesses opted for business as usual.
Archbishop Nkosinathi Ngesi led protests against the Moseneke Commission’s recommendation to move the seat of the high court from Makhanda to Bhisho.
MyPond Hotel’s general manager, Pearl Motaung won Meetings Africa’s Inspiration Empowerment Award.
After nine years and more than 30 court appearances, former StendenSA student David Goliath was found not guilty of causing the death of a fellow student during a birthday party drinking binge in 2014. APRIL
Jeremy Acton of Iqela Lentsango, the Dagga Party of SA was the first speaker at the Grow One Africa Hall at the Bathurst Show and he used the platform to call on the cannabis community to reject the Cannabis for Private Purposes Bill.
Game reserve owner WarneRippon offered a R100,0000 reward for information that would lead to the arrest and conviction of poachers currently operating in the Eastern Cape, who had killed more than a dozen rhinos in the previous six months. A week later, a convicted rhino poacher who escaped from the Grahamstown correctional facility in Makhanda was arrested at another private reserve in the area.
The new NSRI Kenton rescue craft, Spirit of Kenton, was launched ahead of the Easter weekend.
Seventeen families facing possible eviction from municipal land in Boknes were
set to have their concerns heard in court following a monthslong struggle to secure legal representation.
Rotary International’s second-biggest global grant on the African continent, and the largest in South Africa, was directed to seven of Makhanda’s schools.
DA leader John Steenhuisen had a tour of small towns in Ndlambe and Makana where he elaborated on the “Moonshot Pact” that the party believed was the key to unseating the ANC in government and putting SA on a better trajectory.
Caregivers at Ekuphumleni Educare Centre in Kenton-onSea had to quickly come up with a plan to make sure the 53 children in their care would not go hungry after thieves broke in for the fourth time, stealing more than a month’s supply of school meals.
Businesses in the Port Alfred and surrounding areas were battling to counteract the impact of SA’s load-shedding crisis.
Ndlambe Municipality mayor, Khululwa Ncamiso kicked off her mayoral imbizo roadshow.
MAY
The Prudhoe community east of Port Alfred, said the government’s failure to offer ongoing support was to blame for a destructive looting spree at the Fish River Resort.
Two people died on the R72 near Port Alfred and one sustained severe injuries after two vehicles collided head-on.
Toilets, and sand, along with staff productivity, road maintenance and water security featured high on the priorities of Kleinemonde residents attending the municipality’s IDP meeting with residents across Ndlambe’s 10 wards. Kleinemonde is in Ward 6.
Residents, staff and students from Rhodes University and the College of the Transfiguration (COTT), businesspeople, members of the Unemployed People’s Movement and community leaders joined in protest against renewed prolonged water outages in Makhanda’s decade-long water crisis on Monday May 8.
Port Alfred’s town’s branch of Child Welfare closed its doors on Friday, March 31 thanks to unreliable funding.
Port Alfred’s KFC branch was robbed at gunpoint on Sunday night, May 14.
Issues addressed at ward nine’s imbizo at Jauka Hall on Monday May 8 included the distribution of wheelie bins, paving of strategic streets, stray animals, and housing.
Peace walker Siyanda Dlamini visited Makhanda, Port Alfred and Kenton.
Crack Joburg software engineer Vusi Sindane tested his personal limits with an epic cycle across the country to raise funds for school 10,000 school shoes by cycling 3,000km from Musina to Cape Town.
The BRICS (Brazil, India, China, South Africa) employment working group meeting was held in Port Alfred.
Efforts to make Port Alfred beaches safer received a shotin-the-arm with the acquisition of a brand new quad bike.
A marathon police operation saw the last of the five rhino poachers who escaped from Makhanda’s prison in October last year back behind bars.
JUNE
Shop owners were frustrated by the damming up of raw sewage in Biscay Road in Port Alfred’s city centre.
The looted Fish River Resort was now protected by a security company after the national government intervened.
Judge Gerard Bloem handed down hefty sentences of between 16 and 20 years to the six men convicted for conspiracy to poach rhino in a ground-breaking judgment.
Cable theft in and around Port Alfred was costing around R9,000 a day.
The excellent work of the Port Alfred K9 unit’s operational members was recognised in a special SAPS awards ceremony.
JULY
Ndlambe Municipality needs to explore alternative ways of collecting debt from defaulting ratepayers, the Port Alfred Ratepayers and Residents’ Association (PARRA) said after it emerged that ratepayers were effectively subsidising several businesses and dozens of residents whose unpaid debt to the municipality amounted to hundreds of thousands of rands.
The upgrading of New Rest informal settlement, funded by the department of human settlements, got under way to upgrade around 1,700 informal housing units.
A Port Alfred business owner and his manager were arrested following the recovery of more than 19kg of caternary (overhead) cabling and 7kg of copper cabling from a secondhand goods shop.
A Gqeberha man died on July 9 following an accident on the R72 opposite Port Alfred High School.
Senior officials from the Eastern Cape Liquor Board spent time explaining their limits and powers to invited stakeholders in the Council Chamber at the Kenton Town Hall.
ACDP provincial leader Lance Grootboom lashed out at the faith community, saying that Christians who are refusing to vote are indirectly contributing to what he termed leadership problems in SA’s political domain.
Police were investigating a case of murder after 29-year-old Shaun Beam died on Monday July 17, six days after being brutally beaten in an alleged mob justice incident in Nemato.
An extraordinary show of unity all but blew away justice minister Ronnie Lamola in the city hall in Makhanda as the Makana community explained why they so vehemently opposed to the proposed move of the seat of the Eastern Cape High Court from Makhanda to Bhisho.
ActionSA in the Ndlambe municipal area surpassed the 500-member mark with branches in five of Ndlambe’s 10 wards.
AUGUST
Two life sentences were handed down to rapists for separate incidents in Nemato in 2016. In both cases, the investigating officer was D/W/O Peterson Luzuko Kanzi from the Port Alfred family violence child protection and sexual offences unit.
Cable thieves left residents of Ekuphumleni at Kenton-on-Sea without electricity for up to eight months, while extended network outages due to a combination of severe loadshedding and infrastructure theft and vandalism, continued to hamper Kleinemonde’s communications with the outside world. The Hawks took over many of the investigations into communications infrastructure theft.
The ANC’s Sarah Baartman region said it would investigate what led to the arrest of a councillor who was taken in for questioning released the next day, related to the alleged rape of a minor.
The police were on the hunt for armed suspects who shot and killed three people including a department of correctional service employee in Makhanda on Thursday August 3 at an Extension 6, Joza, home.
Having your home burgled remained the most common crime in the areas served by Ndlambe’s police stations, according to the crime statistics for April 1 to June 30 2023.
Retired chief scientist at the SA Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity, Prof Alan Whitfield believed current environmental regulations had not led fish stocks on the path to recovery in the country’s estuaries.
Ndlambe’s future and existing infrastructure came into focus as the council worked its way through a packed agenda on Tuesday August 29.
Field rangers were praised for being the heart and soul of the Eastern Cape Parks and
Tourism Agency, board chair Dr Kwezi Mzilikazi said at Thomas Baines Reserve on World Ranger Day (July 31).
SEPTEMBER
The Kowie River was abuzz with activity for the Rand Merchant Bank Universities Boat Race.
Extensive fires caused havoc on the N2 and threatened property on the R67 between Port Alfred and Makhanda.
SAPS Kenton-On-Sea detectives were investigating two cases of murder following an early morning shooting incident on Wednesday August 30, 2023. Two men died and a woman was injured inside a housing complex in Kenton.
Professor Godwell Nhamo addressed the International Emergency Management Society’s annual conference, which was held at StendenSA in Port Alfred and Rhodes University in Makhanda.
A combination of gale-force southwesterly winds, driving massive ocean swells and the already extra-high spring tide caused extensive damage to beach infrastructure along the Sunshine Coast, late in the afternoon on Saturday September 16. Coastal towns along the South African shoreline, from Cape Town to East London and beyond experienced varying degrees of damage.
Two dogs reported missing from the Port Alfred and Ndlambe District SPCA at the beginning of this month were found, thanks to manager Lisa