city of cape town

And talking of beaches…

Posted on November 12, 2014November 12, 2014

(Because we have been doing that today).

u wot, m8?

Why?!? Why, Allison?!? Because:

IT’S. A. BEACH.

That’s why.

I mean, fair play if you want to have a pop at the council because the N1 is covered in piles of sea shells or the local municipal tennis courts are covered in piles of sea shells. That shouldn’t be happening.
But this isn’t those places. This is a beach. That’s where seashells happen. Beaches are where you get seashells. She (whoever “she” is) infamously sells them right there, on the sea shore.

What on earth are you thinking, Allison? Where will this madness end? Which other Cape Town tourist sites are you going to foolishly interrogate over the twitter platform?

@KirstenboschNBG The flower beds in the main garden > can’t see the soil for the plants and flowers.Why? #cleanup

@2OceansAquarium The kelp forest exhibit > can’t see the fish for the long fronds of seaweed.Why? #cleanup

@TableMountainCa The sky behind Table Mountain > can’t see the clouds for the big lump of rock.Why? #cleanup

Honestly, Allison. I’ve got better things to do today than publicise idiotic requests to the council.
Get your act together.

@CityofCTAlerts

Posted on August 7, 2014

“Be alert. Your city needs lerts.”

Presenting the @CityofCTAlerts twitter handle – your new number one go to source for all things you need alerting about in the City of Cape Town.

Follow now and stay informed. And alerted.

New City Logo

Posted on February 24, 2014June 2, 2020

The City of Cape Town plans to change the City’s logo and – obviously – there is MASS OUTRAGE over their decision and – obviously – over the new logo as well.

Here’s what it is currently (wax crayons over mountain, left) and what they’re proposing (child’s multicoloured snowflake, right):

Many colours. Much circle. Very new. So round. Such different. Wow.

And here’s a video they’ve made explaining why they’re proposing the change and what’s behind the new logo:

Obviously, people don’t like change. It’s unsettling, and thus humans are naturally resistant to it. Personally, I find myself more unsettled by the city media manager’s comments last week:

The Argus quoted Cape Town city’s media manager Priya Reddy as saying that a review of the metropole’s current corporate identity and accompanying tagline – “This city works for you” – was found to be “completely misaligned to this government’s vision”.

Which, when you read it again, doesn’t sound great, does it?

Suddenly, everyone is a corporate logo design expert. All the people, with their insightful comments like: “The colours aren’t right”, “it’s too round” and the inevitable “It’s got to have a more inclusive feel and communicate with both the client and their audience, though simplicity and multi-medium reproducibility are obviously key parameters to groupthink when approaching iconic and practical corporate logo design”.

Hmm. Actually that last one might have been a real corporate logo design expert.

Of course, there have already been allegations of wasted expenditure but there’s been the usual hyperbole too: apparently the logo will cost “hundreds of millions” to introduce. Just like the new Portside building was going to be “as high as Table Mountain” and Jacob Zuma was going to be “a great president”.
I’ve always loved the way that people make stuff up to support their opinions.

As for the logo? I quite like it. The old one has been with us since I moved over to Cape Town, and, like me, it’s getting a bit long in the tooth and rather stale. Those arguing that the money could and should have been spent on something better are probably right, because there’s always something more needy than whatever we’re spending money on in South Africa. Always.
I would say that they were rather quiet when the City projected Nelson Mandela onto the face of Table Mountain with big green lasers though. Presumably because, although the big green laser money could obviously have been spent on something better, they quite liked the big green laser thing.

Understandably, too: It was quite cool.

But equally, see: summer water parks in the city, concerts in De Waal park, Christmas lights, the MyCiti bus service and traffic police roadblocks.

If this new logo is approved, then I’m willing to bet that in a decade’s time, there’ll be equal outrage when the City decides to change it again. Presumably (according to Priya Reddy, anyway) because people weren’t making progress possible. Together.

UPDATE: An expert opinion.
(But you probably don’t want to listen just in case you don’t agree with him.)

WHAT DID THEY FIND IN THE SEWER?

Posted on October 15, 2013October 15, 2013

Fresh on the heels of the infamous What exactly happened up at the University? post, in which we asked (with little success in getting any sort of reasonable response) er… What exactly happened up at the University?

This one concerns a City of Cape Town Press Release about their sewers. Not exactly your normal Tuesday morning reading, but I was concerned in case there was a local fatberg that I needed to know about. Well, not quite, but it was about sewer blockages and the odd things that cause them.

First of all, some facts and figures:

Cape Town has more than 9 000 kilometers of domestic sewers, which convey the volumes of sewage and industrial discharges coming from several suburbs to its 23 wastewater treatment works.
Annually, the City deals with approximately 102 000 sewer blockages – or about 11 blockages per kilometre – largely caused by the incorrect usage of the onsite sewer system, the removal of sewer covers, the dumping of inappropriate objects and vandalism of the City’s infrastructure. In the 2012/2013 financial year, 57 000 of these sewer blockage incidents were as a result of contraventions to the Wastewater and Industrial Effluent By-law.

And then, Councillor Ernest Sonnenberg gives us a list of some items that his staff have found in, and removed from, the city sewers:

suitcases
ram’s horns
sheep skins
building rubble
a trolley
a set of cutlery
tyres (most common)

Right. Tyres and trolleys get around, so that’s understandable. Building rubble is expensive to dump legally, so that too, makes sense (unfortunately). Sheep get around too, and they are known for following each other like… well… sheep… One falls into a sewer, the next follows, and so on, just like big woolly lemmings.
Surely we can see that the horns and the skins go together. It’s not rocket science. It’s not even advanced shepherding.

But then, things get a bit sketchy with the cutlery sets and suitcases.
Were people perhaps trying to unblock their toilets… with… cutlery… and then it disappeared around the u-bend?
But then why would you use cutlery for that task and at what point would you not stop using cutlery to try and unblock your loo?

Maybe you lose a fork and you think:

“Damn, I nearly had it unblocked. The idea of using a fork to unblock my bog may have been fairly unorthodox, but it turned out to be the near perfect tool for the job. Things were going so well until I lost my grip on the elegantly sculpted handle. I’ll confidently risk another fork in a secondary attempt to ensure a free flow through my water closet.”

But then you lose that one too, and wouldn’t the doubts start to creep in a bit?

“Grr. I can’t afford to keep losing forks like this. Maybe it would be best if I just gave up on the… hang on… perhaps a spoon might do it?”

And pretty soon, just like getting hooked on heroin (well, similar, anyway), you’re desperately trying cake forks, fish knives, and – as you hit the proper hard stuff – a gravy ladle, in an attempt to poke the blockage (which now also contains quite a lot of cutlery) down the waste pipe. And when that doesn’t work, you automatically think:

“Hmm. Maybe I need something bigger. There’s a suitcase on top of my wardrobe. That might be the answer.”

I don’t think so.

But all this speculation is very much secondary to our initial question, and it’s that one which forms the title of the post:

WHAT DID THEY FIND IN THE SEWER?

Because Councillor Sonnenberg quietly drops this little gem in towards the end of the press release:

As we are committed to being a well-run city, responsive to the needs of our citizens, we have gone to great lengths to ensure sewer blockages are fixed timeously. A shared responsibility for this massive challenge, however, is vital. It causes severe inconvenience to many residents and our staff works tirelessly to resolve these incidents. Often our staff find objects in the system that are so disturbing that one does not even want to mention them.

Wait… what?
Let’s run that one past you one more time:

Often our staff find objects in the system that are so disturbing that one does not even want to mention them.

What? More disturbing that cutlery sets and suitcases? And more disturbing than the poo? Because poo can be pretty disturbing, but to be honest, unpleasant though it is, it’s a fairly normal thing to find in a sewer. So what exactly did your staff find in the system?

WHAT DID THEY FIND IN THE SEWER?

What could be more disturbing than the stuff you’ve already mentioned and the stuff that we all expect to be there anyway? Were there aliens? Do we have a local version of Area 51 in the tunnels under our streets? It seems an unusual way to introduce themselves to us.
Was it perhaps Zombies, silently gathering ahead of their inevitable take-over of the city, country and world in the upcoming apocalypse?
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Not hugely disturbing – just distract them with pizza.

Or did they perhaps find a secret Afrikaner enclave? Now that would be disturbing.

“We were alerted to the presence of the enclave when we heard the unmistakable sound of Kurt Darren wafting down the pipes near Durbanville. The smell of human waste was replaced with that of braai smoke and boerewors.
And then some red balloons floated past.”

Either way, until we are informed of the whole truth, there will always be speculation, some of it rampant, like this stuff. That could lead to panic – I know I’d be pretty worried if Steve Hofmeyr was living under my street. For that reason, I have emailed Cllr Sonnenberg in an effort to get to the… er… bottom of this matter and I will let you know as soon as I have any further information.

City to frack CPD?

Posted on March 14, 2012

Wow. This is huge.

The contents of a previously confidential and completely fictitious City of Cape Town report which were revealed during routine business in the Western Cape High Court this morning look set to cause outrage across the city.
The report, commissioned late last year, outlines details of plans to move the Cenotaph from its present site on Adderley Street in the City Centre to a disused quarry on Chapman’s Peak Drive where it would be used as part of a hydraulic fracturing rig to extract the rich deposits of natural gas discovered at the site during preliminary survey work by the toll company Entilini last year.

The plan marries together three contentious issues which are described by the report’s anonymous author as “awkward problems which could prove potentially costly vote-wise at the next election, but which require addressing”. The author goes on to suggest that “tying the three together would likely limit the amount of negative PR generated by these issues should we address them separately”, but notes:

On face value, this plan makes good financial and political sense and makes the best of several difficult situations facing the City; namely, (a) that the position currently occupied by the Cenotaph is the preferred site for a MyCiti bus station, (b) that the City contract with Entilini requires that we must upgrade the Chapman’s Peak Drive toll plaza and a huge office park, and (c) that the natural gas deposits beneath Chapman’s Peak Drive are of such value that it would be foolish not to act upon them.
However, we should expect stiff opposition to each of these issues, given the historical significance of the Cenotaph, the emotional attachment of Hout Bay residents to Chapman’s Peak Drive, and the current negative publicity surrounding the process of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”).

The report suggests that certain environmental and financial points regarding the plans should be emphasised in media releases and interviews, including:

The convenience and improved carbon footprint of public transport when compared to private cars.
The recycling of the Cenotaph material and the return of those stones to their natural home in a quarry.
The cleanliness of natural gas when compared to electricity from coal.
The offset of expensive costs of new toll plaza and first stages of the Entilini office park through selling natural gas fracked from the Chapman’s Peak Drive site.

The confidential report appears to have been distributed to appropriate departments within the municipality.
City officials were unable to comment on the report at the time of writing.

Watch this one folks – I have a feeling we’re going to be hearing a whole lot more about it.