Читать книгу War Party - Greg Ardé - Страница 12

A boondoggle if ever there was

The horror of political assassination in KwaZulu-Natal, beyond what it foretells for the country as a whole, is that people have become inured to the violence. The bloody brutality, the cruelty and the human loss have largely become masked in the public eye. It is the new normal.

Beyond some graphic media reports, people who aren’t directly affected by the violence appear numbed. “That’s politics for you,” they will say with a shrug. Sometimes arrests are made and there’s much fanfare as politicians flock to the limelight in condemnation of the killing or to crusade around the innocence of one or other comrade.

This all played out in Umzimkhulu, a nondescript town typical of many inland of the sea between Durban and East London. There’s not much to it but a collection of drab buildings. The town is divided for the most part into two parallel roads which are fronted by cheek-by-jowl trading stores. The roads merge near a collection of buildings that appear distinct because they aren’t cash-and-carry outlets. They consist of a court building and a flophouse hotel and, opposite them, the municipality headquarters and the now notorious Memorial Hall.

Memorial Hall is more a bad merger of two buildings shells, one historic and another relatively new. It is a peculiar arrangement. There is a scuffed plaque commemorating the family of Donald Strachan, the first European reputed to have carved out a settlement in Umzimkhulu. At its core Memorial Hall is a crumbling period building with Cape Dutch gables, but there’s a ridiculous bolt-on construction where builders obviously tried to erect a bigger, more modern chamber. In March 2019 weeds grew around the rubble, exposed foundations and spalling concrete.

* * *

To think that three people were apparently murdered for Memorial Hall is appalling. The sight of it is enough to spur you to accelerate the last kilometre to the bridge that spans the Umzimkhulu River, the first stretch of the road home to Durban, 160 km away.

The building is a glaringly obvious boondoggle. In 2012 a R4 million contract was awarded to give the hall a facelift. Five years and two contractors later, the cost of the project had escalated to R16 million but most of the work was still incomplete. News reports later suggested that an official was romantically linked to the owner of the first company that was contracted and that was eventually kicked off site.