New approach needed to secure heritage sites

Ayear ago, a team of reporters from this newspaper visited the heritage and tourism sites around the city and encountered a sorry site. During their visit to 12 monuments, statues and other sites of historical significance around the metro, the team saw broken needles, shards of glass, condom wrappers, evidence of wanton vandalism and graffiti scrawled across historical monuments.

At the time, the municipality vowed to deal with the problem, saying it was committed to maintaining and repairing the sites and it was seeking community support to take ownership of the sites to hopefully stem the recurring problem of vandalism.

Fast-forward a year later, not much has changed, and anything that has changed has not done so for the better.

One year on and a visit to the sites displayed shocking scenes of decay.

This comes at a time when SA desperately needs to boost its tourism sector, which was bludgeoned by the Covid-19 pandemic and Disaster Management regulations.

It comes as the Bay is battling an unemployment rate of more than 40% and needs all the help it can get to boost the local economy.

The worrying trend of late is that there appears to be a deliberate attempt to destroy heritage sites, parks, libraries, schools and sports facilities.

Jennie Bennie, of the Historical Society of Port Elizabeth, said it was becoming increasingly difficult to deal with the vandalism problem of monuments and historical sites.

“The destructive element is frightening ... We spend a lot of time and energy fixing and rebuilding these sites only to have it vandalised over and over again. It is a very expensive exercise,” Bennie said.

What this tells us is that simply going back and fixing the sites and not dealing with the root of the problem means the city will never win the fight.

It requires a joint security and community approach to tackle the problem.

It is encouraging that the city has hired security companies to secure some of the vulnerable sites, but it is not enough as there are more than 4,000 municipal sites which cannot be under guard 24 hours a day as it is simply unaffordable.

The city does not have an endless supply of money to bankroll the repair of sites damaged by the very community they’re meant to benefit.

It requires collaboration among the local authority, stakeholders in the city as well as active citizens to come up with and implement practical solutions to deal with this scourge.