ENVIRONMENT and ENERGY: HELGARD'S COLUMN
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that more than half its citizens live without water as
a matter of course. The supply of water during the
festival is so erratic that our guests fall asleep not
knowing if they will be able to shower, boil a kettle, or
brush their teeth when they wake up. And, even if a
plan is hurriedly made for festival visitors, it is done at
the expense of the families living here who just want
the basics so that they can go about productive,
normal lives.”
Lankester argued, “We can’t, as we did one night during
the festival, have 2 000 people in the monument without
a single running tap. We can’t turn the water off in the
township so it can flow in the affluent west. There should
be a plan that ensures a reliable supply to everyone
who lives here, all the time, and that makes the supply
scalable to accommodate the influx of visitors.”
He continued, “We can’t pat ourselves on the back every
year for staging the biggest arts event in Africa, one
of the biggest and most iconic of the world’s festivals,
when we can’t even offer our guests a flushing toilet. It’s
embarrassing and humiliating.”
In an objective way, Tony pays credit to the men and
the women from the water department who work
so hard during the festival, patching over crumbling
infrastructure; battling municipal cash flow issues that
make it hard for them to get essential parts and supplies;
and getting out of bed in the middle of the night to fix a
burst pipe or flooded pump station. Those workers who
barely manage to keep it together, but cannot win against
the bigger enemy that he identifies as the “neglect,
apathy, and lack of political will” of the municipal powers
in the Grahamstown City Hall.
Lankester pleads for a proper plan. He concludes: “The
city and the province need to take the infrastructure
crisis seriously, or they will lose the festival. It might not
happen next year or the year after that. But, unless the
decline in infrastructure is halted and turned around,
it is entirely feasible that the festival will not be in
Grahamstown in 10 years’ time.”
Lankester’s letter is available on the festival’s website
at https://www.nationalartsfestival.co.za/news/opiniongrahamstown-we-have-a-problem/. PA
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