Taking Back the Town

The Cradock of this summer feels very di-erent to last year’s. Even after the influx of month-end litterbugs, the streets still are largely clean. Coral aloes and succulents brighten tra‘c islands. Several buildings have had a lick of paint. The leiwater furrows are gurgling with water again, bringing life to gardens in the older part of town. It’s a dramatic change from last year, when any one of us Cradock residents would have said this Eastern Cape town was circling the drain.

In no particular order, these were some of the problems – regular electricity and water outages, a huge and growing debt to Eskom, raw sewage pouring into the Great Fish River, a disgraceful municipal rubbish dump, potholes, blocked stormwater drains, clogged leiwater furrows, litter in the streets and at picnic spots, and visibly crumbling infrastructure. Problems, in short, that are present in about 80 per cent of the country’s municipalities.

At every braai or social gathering, people mourned the days when the town was well