Mayor of Cape Town Geordin Hill-Lewis’ promise to build a wall to contain communities living along the N2 between Khayelitsha and Langa looks likely to be election spin after the Western Cape MEC for Infrastructure Tertuis Simmers today denied having been engaged in the so-called project.
In its capacity as the road authority under Roads Ordinance 19 of 1976, Simmers’ department would have to grant approval. But according to the MEC, in written responses to questions posed by Brett Herron MPL, the department has not been engaged regarding the proposal, has had no involvement in any planning, is not involved in any studies, and has not spent any funds on any work relating to the project.
When the Mayor included the wall in the adjustment budget tabled in Council in January, he described it as stretching from the Baden Powell Road intersection to Bhunga Avenue. That stretch of the N2 is almost, if not entirely, owned and under the authority of the Western Cape Provincial Government.
The Mayor allocated R114m to the wall… but on close inspection R107m of this money is allocated only in 2027/28. That’s not this financial year, or the next one, but the one after that. The remaining R7m presumably largely covers the costs of PR and spin this year.
If Simmers knows nothing it indicates that Hill-Lewis’ nose is in for a growth spurt.
Walling off the ghettoes is more fantasy than reality, certainly at this stage, with lots of energy devoted to the comms (in an election year) and none to actual planning.
The R114m that the Mayor has miraculously conjured for the project without taking the most basic step of engaging the landowner for permission would be better spent – and more effective in changing living conditions conducive to crime – by investing in upgrading the very communities they’d like to wall in.
GOOD Youth Leadership: GOOD promotes youth leadership within the party and in communities.
storm master
The Man who could only Drink Milk
I know an old man who had lived a life full of adventure, but his health started to catch up with him. He\’d run the Boston Marathon, was an avid surfer, and climbed Everest, but he\’d started to have abdominal pains around his 85th birthday and went to see a doctor. Sadly, he ultimately was diagnosed with a rare degenerative liver disease that slowly made him allergic to everything he ate.
He kept copious notes, and as an avid gastronomist slowly grew to despair as everything he\’d spent his life enjoying became something he could no longer eat. Alcohol went first, then mushrooms, then bread, then root vegetables, then coffee, one at a time he had to remove them from his diet. The doctor was clear: if he kept eating something his liver rejected the autoimmune response would be quick and severe, and would lead to a painful death. Little by little, everything was taken away as an option, until the only thing that remained was milk.
In some ways, this actually made life easier, because the mental strain of remembering what he could and couldn\’t eat was gone, but then so was the joy in variety. But he took it in stride, and got his own cow and took classes from a farmer to learn everything he could about the only thing that could give him sustenance. And even within milk, he could still have yogurt, butter, cream, some cheeses, and other milk-derived products he hadn\’t fully rejected yet, so it wasn\’t all bad. But then one day a few months later he felt the pain again, and he knew cow\’s milk was no longer an option.
Lacking other options, he tried goat\’s milk, and he was delighted that it worked! The protein structure is just different enough that his body still tolerated it. That bought him another month. And that\’s when we came up with a wonderful plan to go on one last grand adventure around the world. If he could get one month of life out of the milk of every mammal, he\’d actually have a few more years to enjoy life to the fullest and see the world in all its beauty. Each month, we\’d pick a place with a new mammal, and he would immerse himself fully with the locals, learn all the ways to prepare the milk, and just enjoy the hand he had been dealt as much as he could.
We milked sheep in New Zealand. Camels in Egypt. Zebras in South Africa. Giant bats in Indonesia. Do you know how many Peruvian cuy you need to milk to get a single glass? I do. Even as his health slowly faded, he stayed cheerful, and I felt lucky to join him on the adventure of a lifetime. That brings us to today when he got to the very end of his spreadsheet, and declared that he was now allergic to every mammal. He\’d enjoyed his journey, but his time had come to an end, for there was nothing left to milk.
To which I said nonsense, I bet we can milk a few thousand karma out of this post.
soda delirium
Fun South African Fact: While the country only covers 1% of the Earth’s land surface, South Africa boasts 10% of the world’s bird, fish and plant species as well as 6% of its mammal and reptile species!