the end of an era

Two of the busiest art galleries in PE are currently holding their final exhibitions, before closing.

The delightful Cuyler Street Gallery, owned by Tossie Theron, has been doing great things for PE artists for the past 13 years. Tossie is taking a well earned rest, and has sold the gallery to the owners of the Ron Belling Gallery, who apparently plan to keep it as a gallery, and open a coffee shop there too.

On the other side of town, Heidi and Frans, of the Kuhne Boekkooi Gallery in Charlo, are relocating to Nieu Bethesda in the Karroo, and tomorrow will be the last day that the gallery is open. It is sad to see them go, but Heidi will be continuing to promote the arts with her digital newsletters.

Entrepreneur?

One does not begrudge any entrepreneur the chance of making a living, but the way this sign has been scrawled on this wall, in Bird Street, seems to indicate this is also another contribution to the urban decay we see in so many parts of Central.

Keeping the Parks clean....

Even in winter, the Kikuyu grass in Richmond Park, and many others around the city, remains green and needs mowing, although it is certainly not as rampant as it is in summer. The Municipality has outsourced the mowing of the parks to private companies run, according to the latest PC Speak, by PDs, as part of its BEE initiative.

I could write a book about how irritating I find acronyms, and when you get into the international realm of blogland, they multiply hideously as each country has its own set of acronyms that mean completely different things to the same set of letters elsewhere.

So to translate, "this is Politically Correct speak for using Previously Disadvantaged (black owned) companies, as part of the Black Economic Empowerment initiative." Often this AA (no, not Automobile Association or Alcoholics Anonymous, but Affirmative Action!!) system gets abused and a few fat cats get richer and richer, while the average person remains disadvantaged.

But in this case, it is really cool that small businessmen are being given opportunities to get contracts, invest in machinery, grow their business, and provide employment for others. For many, sweeping up grass cuttings might not seem the most desirable job, but for this lady, it is an opportunity she would not have had 15 years ago, to help provide for her family.

Men at Work

The other morning there was a sudden racket outside our front windows, and investigation revealed that the edge of the park was being dug up. Later on, I saw the orange pipes being dragged along, which confirmed my theory.... this is our turn in part of a huge operation to lay an entire new network of telephone lines throughout the country, for Neotel.

Our telephone system was always government owned, but in 1991 it was partly privatised (the state still controls 39%) The resulting entity was called Telkom, and, to be honest, due to the fact that it has held a monopoly for all these years, not much has improved since so called privatisation. The service remains iffy, and they control all telecommunications in the country, including their competitors, in the form of cellphone and internet providers. They therefore set a minimum price that can be charged by these companies too, and this makes our telecommunications quite expensive. This has led to much anti-Telkom sentiment in the country, where people relieve their frustrations with websites like "hellkom" and "telkom sucks"

Finally, after many years of wrangling (and goodness knows what sort of shady dealings will emerge from the woodwork in time to come) a contract was awarded to another entity, Neotel, to set up in competition to Telkom. And this is the result, orange pipes and digging up of streets are a prelude to (hopefully) improved telecommunications. Still reeling from several cases of corruption and/or bungling of vital services, the South African public seems to have a "we'll believe it when we see it" attitude to this...........

Diane, you asked where exactly we live............. this should give you an idea, this was taken from our front door and in the background across the park is the Old Erica, now an art college.

Car Wash

Near the bottom of Russell Road, opposite the historic graveyard, is a car wash. We have noticed that whatever the time of day, they always seem to be busy.

They handwash the cars, and do a very thorough and reasonably priced job, which probably explains their popularity.

An enterprising gentleman, clearly an immigrant from the North, has set up a coffee shop in the top room over the waiting room, to serve those waiting for their cars to be done. He does everything himself, he was washing tablecloths when I went in (you can see them hanging on the fence to the right.) He made my coffee (instant coffee with creamer, not milk), and went off to buy a loaf of bread when I ordered a toasted tomato sandwich. It is pretty rustic, but I quite enjoyed the out of Africa ambience as I waited for my car to be transformed.

Street Traders

A group of street traders at the beach front selling ther wares. Most of these traders have travelled down a large part of the continent and immigrated to South Africa in recent years looking for a better life. They are very enterprising and always have a good range of stock.

I love Africa #2

Since we are on the subject of our interesting 1st world/3rd world blend, here's another sight we commonly see around here. There are all sorts of controversies surrounding the care of the donkies and the threat to motorists on busy roads, but they do provide a living to enterprising people who would have no other way to survive, and they are certainly are picturesque! Here they are in the upmarket suburb of Walmer.