Arthur Goldstuck
On a road to nowhere
RECONSTRUCTION and development has taken on new meaning in the Johannesburg suburb of Parkwood. About a month ago, a major road in the area was resurfaced. The next day, before the tar had even had time to set, excavators moved in and dug up the road. A representative for the city’s roads directorate, Koos Roets, explained: the roads directorate has compiled a code of practice “for work in the road reserve”, but a “lack of enough legal credibility leads to situations where some utility departments break rank and do their own unco-ordinated work to the embarrassment of all in the administration and frustration of the road-user and tax payer”. He added that the roads directorate was in the process of revising the code of practice to achieve proper co-ordination and control of work.
The hundred-year house
* Then there’s reconstruction, and there’s construction. When Frank Botha has to tell Alberton people how to find his house, he only has to tell them he lives next door to the Ghost House in Brackendowns. It’s not that there’s a haunted house in Eekhoring Street; it’s simply that the house next door has been under construction for 11 years now. “The place just doesn’t get finished,” exclaims Botha, who says he’s had enough of children playing cowboys and crooks there and of things being stolen from the house. The owner and builder, David Sauerman, himself reacts as if he’s seen a ghost when he hears these complaints: “My hair stands on end when I hear about the house. Mr Botha has complained everywhere and all his complaints have been investigated by myself and the police … The house can stand like that for the next 100 years if it suits me.”
* A new South Africa, a new fashion in crime. A well- organised syndicate has embarked on a crime wave against the owners of pedigreed cats across the Witwatersrand. At least 40 expensive Persian cats have been stolen in the past year as far afield as Kempton Park, Sandton, Randburg and Roodepoort. The ring, which operates at night, appears able to enter even the most secure catteries with the skill of, er, cat-burglars. Breeders suspect that the cats are being smuggled out of South Africa for sale to wealthy cat lovers abroad — “perhaps in the Middle East”.
Classy ghost
* Farm school teacher Gordon Roji, who teaches 21 children on a farm near Grahamstown, claims a ghost “in human form” has been keeping him awake at night and making him dozy in front of the pupils he’s supposed to keep from daydreaming. A devout Jehovah’s Witness, his religious conviction does not make allowance for such apparitions. The circuit manager for farm schools in the area, Ntombi Dwane, says he has her sympathy, and she has advised him to get an exorcist. But she is concerned about how she will file her report to the department, and wonders whether it stands a “ghost of a chance” of being acknowledged.
Sources: Rosebank Killarney Gazette, Alberton Record, Northcliff/Melville Times, City Press. S’true Ek Se welcomes contributions.