Thank you to Patrick Hale and community-minded local residents for cleaning Oatlands Park and surrounds over the Christmas period.
Despite their efforts the park resembled a dump this morning. Vanessa and I spent an hour this afternoon bagging litter etc and carting it off to the municipal dump. Puzzling to note the volume and variety – much of it strewn asunder by donkeys.
Analysis of the collection most revealing of its source. One or more neighboring residents consider the park a convenient drop-off point for their disposables including kitchen and garden waste. A strong appeal to desist from this anti-social behavior.
Future transgressions will result in naming and shaming. Information is at hand about one guilty household and it’s not difficult to deduce the identities of others, particularly the fools who dispose of their Christmas wrapping paper with cards still attached.
Oatlands Park is clean and a picture of serenity on this balmy, quiet evening in Grahamstown. A beautiful and historic little city that requires more attention from all. Roll on 2019!
GRAEME HOLMES
Before moving back to Grahamstown in Oct 2017, Graeme was a bank executive based in the big smoke and craziness of Joburg. He has 20 years’ experience in the Payments Industry. He is a Chartered Accountant, has a Masters in Management by Research (MMR) from Wits Business School, and attended an Advanced Management Programme (AMP) offered by INSEAD (The Business School for the World!) in France.
Graeme is the founder of The Grahamstown Project. It’s simple. He says, “Grahamstown is a microcosm of South Africa. If we can’t get this place to function properly then the whole country is stuffed. Many of the troubles we experience as a country today have their roots here in Grahamstown. it is here where black and white people first engaged in conflict on the African continent. It is here where 9 wars of dispossession over 100 years took place and virtually destroyed the amaXhosa nation. But we are where we are. I don’t have a British passport and the boat-trip back to where my ancestors came from is exorbitantly expensive. Furthermore, this is my home. I am a son of Africa. We must work together to redress the injustices of the past and move as one into a brighter future.”
Graeme is an avid historian, writer, vlogger and public speaker. Like and follow the Facebook page. Join him on a tour. Contact him. He would love that.