Durban lost out by laughing off plan

IN THE early 1970s, the country as well as Durban was suffering a recession. My partners and I decided to send one of our partners on the first SA Property Owners Association trip to the US in the hopes of seeing some development that could boost our city.

In Baltimore, we found an answer. Baltimore had gone through a similar period some years earlier, and they tackled a development very similar to that which appeared on the front page of the Mercury today.

We drafted a proposal almost as wide as today’s one and presented it to the then Durban City Council.

We were laughed out of the chamber and told that we were bereft of our senses.

We were left licking our wounds, as the research and trip had cost us R20 000 – a lot of money then.

We then decided to present a similar proposal to the Cape Town City Council.

Well, guess what? We received a similar reaction there. Some 12 years later, a clear-thinking city councillor in Cape Town found the plan and the project was implemented. The V&A Waterfront in Cape Town is now a major attraction.

I wonder how far ahead Durban would have been today if our socalled “hare-brained” proposal had been accepted over 40 years ago?

CARL MOUTON Retired partner of Stauch

Vorster Architects

Ashamed of this cruel municipality

I AM ashamed to be a citizen under the eThekwini Municipality, which ruthlessly authorised apartheidstyle forced removals and demolition of houses of poor citizens in Amaoti.

I wonder how you sleep at night knowing families have no place to sleep just because of your actions?

But of course, you sleep peacefully because your hollow existence is devoid of conscience and morals.

Is this a classic example of expropriation without compensation? Was such a decision the best recourse in the bigger scheme of things? I don’t think so.

According to Maslow, shelter is one of the fundamental needs to be fulfilled for an individual to survive and function optimally, but our municipality seems to think otherwise.

The haunting picture of a poor woman being dragged away from her about-to-be-demolished home will forever be a constant reminder of how this self-centred and insensitive municipal administration has failed its citizens.

It will forever hang around your necks like the proverbial albatross.

One of my elderly friends said the picture reminded him of the forced removals of Sophiatown and District Six.

The proposed housing project should have been designed in a manner that involved and acknowledged the existence of these families rather than resorting to drastic barbaric action that is not only an embarrassment, but will forever be a black mark against this administration.

No amount of self-aggrandisement can justify denying an individual shelter.

Administrative functions must not violate the provisions of chapter two of our constitution, in which individual rights and civil liberties are expressly enshrined.

The irony of it all is that the very same people who sanctioned such a barbaric and insensitive act will be campaigning for votes, come 2016 local government elections, and kissing the babies of the very same people they persecute.

I feel ashamed to be a citizen of this municipality led by this powerhungry, insensitive administrative machinery.

BONGINKOSI “NOGWAJA” NDLELA

Ntuzuma

Pay back the money, iLembe Municipality

I HAVE tried in vain to get the iLembe District Municipality to refund my water deposit of R650 after I closed my account with them on May 31 last year.

I have sent three registered letters (each of them costing R22.90) to the municipal manager, copies of the letters to the mayor, and e-mails to five municipal employees.

These officials fob me off with delaying tactics like “your query is being attended to and you will be advised of its progress” or “I will be accelerating sorting out this query”.

It is all talk and no action. I don’t believe a word they tell me now. I have a refund claim, not a query, since they already have my money.

I have twice been asked to send in my refund deposit application dated June 8, which states “your refund will be processed in 4 to 6 weeks”. I am still waiting 17 weeks later.

Deposits are by law required to be ring-fenced, as the money does not belong to the municipality. Has the money disappeared or been used elsewhere? Or is there a cash-flow crisis?

Then there is the non-payment of the staff group life scheme for which iLembe workers went on the rampage and were given a homeowner allowance sweetener.

Has water-deposit money worth R24.47 million disappeared? What else has disappeared that the public doesn’t know about?

I tried to search for their balance sheet on the internet, but the website states “copy to be attached”, so I wasn’t able to check if the water-deposit money was still there.

At this rate, the auditor-general will have a field day trying to sort out this financial mess. Pay back the money …

FRANK DU TOIT

North Coast

Time for public servants to face heat

POLICE Minister Nathi Nhleko, when releasing the latest crime stats, stated that violent public protest for service delivery is not a police issue and he is correct.

I quote Nhleko, “What do people protest about? The perceived lack of service delivery for example, they want water, they want roads and so forth and therefore embark of these types of actions.

“Therefore a solution to that problem is not a policing intervention. It’s a different form of intervention that is required.”

The police are used as the face of government failure and this may have led to a number of police mur- ders. The public are fed up with a lack of water, electricity and jobs and the closest they can vent their frustration on is the police and the public.

It is time to reorganise the work of the public servants who are responsible for service delivery. An ideal situation in future would be for the heads of department, ministers, city managers and mayors, to meet all service protesters in the street without the police being present.

They have an army of bodyguards who do nothing all day because these culprits are never confronted with violence in their offices.

If the job came with the responsibility to meet protesters, then ministers and managers of departments entrusted with service delivery would think twice about spending huge amounts of money on air travel to other countries and wasteful expenditure on lavish banquets and a host of other nonsense like unwanted international sporting events.

It is always the citizens and the police who must put up with something they have no control over. It’s time for those who fail the people to meet the people in the street and stop talking rubbish from the safety of their offices.

L J REUBEN

Durban

Alcoholics, ‘other women’ aren’t news

THE article on the alcoholic isn’t newsworthy. We already afforded this alcoholic nonsense half a page in Tuesday’s Mercury, and now today it appears again under “Addiction” and on another page as well.

This is lazy journalism. We pay to read newspapers and are getting tired of “begging bowl” and “other woman” write-ups. You might as well rename The Mercury (which means “the messenger”) “People Paper”, like the magazine.

J BADOT

Durban