This coming Tuesday, Special Assignment looks back at a story broadcast two years ago, in which promises were made and expectations raised.
In a program entitled “Promises and Lies”, the award-winning documentary program returns to the inner city of Port Elizabeth, where there were hopes for rejuvenation, where it was believed that drug dealers would be vanquished and slumlords brought in line…and asks the question: has anything changed?
“Yes…it’s got fifty times worse!” says one of the most vocal of PE residents, Councillor Terry Herbst.
He’s particularly incensed by the failure to renovate the Donkin Row, the 18 terraced houses, all national monuments, that line Donkin Street.
Two years ago, Irish investor Kenneth Denton, who owns the buildings, promised action.
“Of course we will be improving these buildings”, he said. “But we would rather look after those that need the most urgent care right now…”
That seems to have been a promise and a lie. The buildings in most urgent need of care are now almost only fit for demolition.
Even the vagrants who live in them complain.
“As you can see, this place is a bugger up”, says a man who has illegally occupied a building near Victoria Street, one of the oldest parts of the city.
“There are no windows anymore and people shit and piss all over…I’m tired of cleaning kak”.
Property owner Roger Peters is also tired.
He bought his house in Victoria Street fourteen years ago.
Now he can’t live there anymore.
Drug dealers, pimps and prostitutes have taken over.
“Nights of not sleeping…watching things deteriorate…eventually I couldn’t handle it anymore…I pay rates and taxes…the municipality is failing me!”
Italian investor Giovanni Zanutta, who has renovated a building in historic Havelock Square, had this to say: “I can’t understand why South Africans accept this…the municipality spends money cleaning and keeping gardens neat, yet they allow people to cause damage…and it gives space to crime…”
Two years, Safety and Security MEC Thobile Mhlahlo told a public meeting in PE:
“We are going to act…this place is not Hillbrow and cannot become another Hillbrow.”
In a recent interview with him, he said PE was winning the battle against crime.
Yet crack and cocaine are still sold openly on the streets of Central and illegal weapons are available too. Late last year, we negotiated to buy a hand grenade in St Patrick’s Rd, a 9mm at Castle Court and a pistol in Parliament Street. |
