MyPE

Community Business Directory, Event Listings, News and Views from Gqeberha, Nelson Mandela Bay

Gqeberha New Years Day – Can We do Sh!t Different in 2025?

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To one an all that braved the Gqeberha beachfront on New Years Day we have a T-Shirt just for you; “Happy Survivor”

Our ’10 minute town’ was put severely to the test yesterday as thousands upon thousands flocked to the sea.

Rest assured the few incidents that took place will be held up by all the keyboard warriors as indicative of how ‘THEY’ act and the many incidents of kindness and good behaviour will be conveniently forgotten.

We left home at 4:30 pm on 1 January to travel down to the beachfront in order to experience just a bit of that New Years magic.

Suffice to say – it took us 45 minutes to get to the beacon at Admiralty Way from Parsons Hill – no traffic was allowed along the beachfront from before the S-Bend all the way to just before the Beacon at the bottom of Admiralty Way. Resulting in a long torturous route to reach the Beacon.

Drivers were, for the most part, overwhelmingly courteous and the speed cops were out in force – we even noticed three ‘CHIPS’ officers on Honda Bikes cruising around.

To say that the beaches were jam packed cheek by jowl would be somewhat of an understatement and the number of tents and gazebos, indicating longer stays than a day, were many.

That so many people save for a whole year just to go to the beach on New Years Day is a sad indictment of our economy and legacy of apartheid spatial planning.

If anything the day brought an overwhelming sense of loss at the ever widening gap between social classes, gender, race and culture as one could distinctly see the ‘invisible’ lines between the different ‘settlements’ set up by different races and classes as you travelled along the beachfront to Schoenies.

Let’s put our heads together and do things differently at the end of 2025.

For example: Our Mayor has been very busy attending to photo-ops at all the usual touch points whilst our various municipal departments spend as much of their budget as they can on ‘quick fix’ projects such as fireworks, concerts, gifts for newborns etc. Why? Well methinks that they do not have the will to actually do projects of meaning to spend their budgets on – like making life just a bit better for all by fixing potholes, water, electricity, sewage, storm water drains, lighting etc. The lazy persons way out of everything is to spend the money on a PARTY! Just another reason why they are called Political PARTIES!

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Alan Straton

Chief Cook, Bottle Washer and Broom Mechanic at MyPE
Passionate about Port Elizabeth and definitely NOT packing for Perth. Alan's ethos is epitomised in the words of Nelson Mandela; "I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the idea of a democratic and free society. If need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." See more articles by Alan.