BATHURST BUZZ
BETTY BAKHANYO
We can shut our eyes and not see the mess.
Or we can sit at home and complain about littering and illegal dumping. Or we can get out there and do something about it.
But why should we? We didn’t make the mess. It’s not our job to clean it up. Property owners and/or the municipality should do their duty!
True enough, but they don’t, and they won’t. And we live here. What’s more, we’re dependent on visitors for anyone to make a living in Bathurst. Whether we run a pub or restaurant, whether we are artists, or B&B owners, without enthusiastic visitors we battle.
So what to do to be attractive?
The first thing is to look clean and proud of our beautiful village. We can become litter free and have trimmed and tidy road verges with little input besides community effort.
Some clean-up initiatives have been going on for years. One such is Vuyo Sontsonga’s soccer kids. From time to time they attack one or other Village littering eyesore, for PR and team building, asking nothing in return. Recently 40 children and Vuyo spent a morning cleaning up what was becoming a dumping site in Timm’s Lane. They were sponsored drinks by one business, and a few Villagers posted “thank you” messages on local WhatsApp groups.
No local residents showed up to help.
A group of Villagers decided recently to do something about the mess on the unoccupied area next to our only stop street. This is full of invasive alien plants, and has been a dumping ground for stolen goods, as well as many worse and smellier things. Most of the area is unfenced privately owned land belonging to a number of people for whom the community has no contact details, so it’s not been possible to ask them to clean up their property. Sunday October 13 and Monday October 14 will see a community clean-up effort on this eyesore. For information or if you’d like to help or contribute towards costs, please WhatsApp 065 730 0473, or email Elizabeth Milne on chair@brra.org.za.
Inspired by a very recent article about successfully putting the Crown back into Kroonstad, other Villagers have come forward with clean-up ideas. It’s now hoped that we can establish a sustainable initiative to drive keeping Bathurst beautiful.
- This article was first published in Talk of the Town, September 26, 2024. The newspaper serving the communities of Ndlambe and the Sunshine Coast, with a weekly wrap of Makhanda news, is available at stores from early on Thursdays.
