Kimberley -
Kimberley residents should start taking responsibility for their actions as the city continues to be swallowed in rubbish, authorities on Monday urged.
This follows a scathing report on the city and its tourist attractions by respected South African political analyst and columnist, Justice Malala, in a recent opinion piece.
Malala described a visit to the city as “deeply disappointing” after finding cracked pavements, overgrown grass along roads and poorly maintained tourist attractions.
Malala also described the world famous William Humphreys Art Gallery (Whag) as “looking abandoned”.
Whag director, Ann Pretorius, on Monday reacted to Malala’s review of the city, saying that the columnist was “entirely right” in that the city was “drowning in dirt”.
“The escalating problem of waste is seriously disconcerting and it is no secret that the council has lost the battle against trash in our streets. What is, however, more alarming is that residents have lost the sense of civil pride.
Over weekends the Oppenheimer Gardens (across the Whag) turns into a party zone with public drinking and braais the order of the day. The problem with that, is that none of the revellers ever pick up after themselves and leave the gardens looking like a rubbish heap, with bottles, cans and food wrappers strewn everywhere.
“This is a serious put-off for tourists wanting to visit the Whag. If residents could only get in the habit of using dustbins and cleaning up where they mess, we wouldn’t be in this situation,” said Pretorius on Monday.
She added that she had raised concerns about public alcohol use at the gatherings in the gardens and subsequent drinking and driving to police, but that these had yielded no results.
Pretorius further questioned Malala’s statement that the Whag looked abandoned.
“The Whag is open from 8am to 4.45pm during weekdays, from 10am to 4.45pm on Saturdays and from 9am to noon on Sundays. It is hard to believe that Malala was met by an ‘abandoned building’,” Pretorius said.
While the Whag is the only national museum in the Northern Cape, it also receives the lowest funding of any national museum in South Africa.
Pretorius said that despite this fact, the Whag remained a world-class attraction.
The spokesman for the Sol Plaatje Municipality, Sello Matsie, also called on residents to start cleaning up after themselves.
“While various teams are currently deployed to clean up large parts of Kimberley, residents are ultimately to blame for the mess we live in. If we want to live in a clean city, each individual has to change his or her behaviour and thinking, and stop throwing rubbish in the streets.
“We need to break the cycle of making a mess and then holding the municipality responsible for the cleaning up. The actions of these culprits make it difficult for the municipality to control the problem,” Matsie said.
He added that the amount of alcohol bottles and cans, as well as used condoms left by revellers in the Oppenheimer Gardens during weekends was “astonishing”.
“It is shocking that residents expect to find a clean park but leave it covered in rubbish,” Matsie said.
According to the municipality’s annual report, a total of 240 illegal dumping sites were cleared in 2013/14. This was half the target of 480 sites.
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