THIS is not the column I wanted to write. I was busy with that column - just peaking with it, in fact, into the final straight - when everything died on me.
Eskom.
I needn't say more - and it wouldn't help if I did. They feel nothing, those people. They've got us by the short and curlies and that's all that matters to them.
Anyway, the column I was working on has now gone and a deadline looms. As they do. But what I can do, now that I've fired up this old laptop, is tell you a little about the column I was writing before our Friday afternoon went pear-shaped. Let's just hope the batteries don't die on us as well.
It was about greed and planned property development in the southern Peninsula, particularly in Kommetjie, where I must declare - lest any fool accuse me of trying to pass up my opinionated invective as objective reporting - I do own a small cottage. In other words, vested interests duly declared.
Unlike some people. But more of that later on.
What's particularly unique about Kommetjie - and what drew me to the place after living in London and Johannesburg - is its humility. In the hundred or so years that it's been around, the place has slowly grown into a village of some 900, mainly modest and unobtrusive dwellings. They co-exist in harmony with their natural surroundings and, as a result, the place looks easy and comfortable.
The other interesting thing about Kommetjie is that it abuts a critically important biodiversity corridor - the only link between the southern and northern parts of the Table Mountain National Park. This corridor is part of the Cape Floral Kingdom World Heritage Site, a place of fynbos and then some; the vegetation here has been rated by the City of Cape Town as "100 per cent irreplaceable".
Yet it is here, in the protected buffer zone alongside this heritage wilderness area, that a local developer wants to sling up a 102-unit luxury housing development. I've seen the plans. It's a clusterf***. The architectural vernacular is, I believe, "stalag". The potty mouth is warranted.
In addition to this monstrosity, this developer has plans for another 300-odd middle- to upper-income housing units and a new commercial centre for the village. He has, I'm told, been trying to turn the place into a sort of Camps Bay on drugs for some time now. He is greatly feared, and some of the older residents reach for their rosaries and clutch at strong drink whenever his name is mentioned.
But it now seems that the provincial government, the cuddly Democratic Alliance, thinks it a good idea these developments go ahead - and destroy a world heritage site in the process.
How could this be? Well, I tried to find out. I looked at an environmental impact report that apparently featured quite prominently in the deliberations here. Oddly enough, the report was drawn up by the very same engineering firm that is set to be quite hands-on in a developmental sense when and if these projects crack a nod.
What is especially interesting - and here I admit that I am no expert - is the way these people count cars. This is important, because the big beef with villagers is the traffic. The mornings are so bad that mommies dropping kids off at schools have to take the long way round - by detouring through Scarborough and Simon's Town to get to Fish Hoek.
But the engineers say there will be no problems with increased traffic. Weirdly, their assessment did not include the increase in traffic expected from large housing developments at Marine Oil and Dido Valley in Simon's Town, Dassenberg in Noordhoek, the new retirement village in Fish Hoek and elsewhere. This in addition to existing traffic from Glencairn, Sun Valley, Capri, Glencairn and so on. All of which means a helluva bottle-neck at Ou Kaapse Weg, the busiest thoroughfare in the southern Peninsula and one that will remain a two-lane road for decades to come.
What fun it will be for all those busloads of tourists, stuck there for hours. At least they'll be able to say, well, Cape Point, that was the idea.
As I say, I'm no expert. And I wish I could tell you more about why the DA would allow such misery. But I can't.
Hopefully, though, the My Vote Counts campaign will succeed in their bid to get the Constitutional Court to pass a law compelling political parties to reveal their private funders, and this would help clear up some of the - no doubt unfounded - suspicions currently circulating about this matter.
This is an adapted version of an article that first appeared in the Weekend Argus.
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