Back in 1992 the National Party under then President FW de Klerk held a ‘white’s only’ referendum that would lead to an end to apartheid and eventually, South Africa’s first all-inclusive one man one vote general election.
2,804,947 of the 3,296,800 registered ‘white’ voters voted in that referendum with 1,924,186 (68.73%) voting YES – 875,619 (31.27%) voting NO with 5142 (0.18%) spoilt votes.
A majority vote!
494,853 registered voters, for whatever reason, never voted so non-voters are really meaningless stats as their choice will never be known. Because of the majority YES vote de Klerk went ahead and started consultation with the ANC. The rest is history.
The right wing accused the government of electoral fraud arguing that white South Africans had the right to rule themselves with Andries Treurnicht and his supporters proposing an independent homeland or volkstaat. But the majority had spoken and although some ‘Packed for Perth’ or other shores to escape the ‘Swart Gevaar’, the inevitable was accepted and a new South Africa was born.
Earlier this year a referendum of sorts under the banner of “Saving St Francis” was held. The purpose, to raise funds to reverse the declining infrastructure of the town by putting its future in the hands of the property owners rather than relying on a municipality already overburdened with having to deliver services to an ever growing poor and disadvantaged population.
The ‘referendum’ required that at least half (50%) of the property owners of St Francis PLUS ONE, would be required one way or other voted to decide for or against declaring a Special Rates Area (SRA). Approximately 840 YES votes (more than the required 50% + 1 voted for the SRA with some 100 property owners voting against. Again the non-votes are meaningless and cannot be claimed by the yays or the nays.
A majority vote?
Being a democratic country the result was surely straight forward, the majority of home owners were in favour of “Saving St Francis”. On purely financial terms, those who voted against the SRA represent just 7% of the rates payable to Kouga Municipality with the YES voters contributing some 60%! Again a democratic split in favour of the yays.
Last week the recently formed St Francis Bay Concerned Residents Association’s (CRA) legal team served papers on the Kouga Municipality naming St Francis Property Owners Association as second respondent and the Non Profit Company, third respondents.
What the outcome of any court action will be is anyone’s guess for we all know that the smallest technicality can swing the judge’s final decision in either party’s favour. What is not in question is that it is going to cost either or both the Municipality and or the CRA a lot of money. No doubt the Kouga Municipality has budget allocation for legal fees but what of the CRA? Word has it that their legal team is working for free (hearsay) but what if they have to pay the costs out of their own pockets if the judgement goes against them.
Andries Treurnicht at least came up with a possible solution (in his mind) to the 1992 referendum in suggesting a ‘volkstaat’, sadly the CRA has not come up with a single suggestion. Even so surely they can sit around a table with the SRA committee as suggested by Hilton Thorpe in a recent letter to St Francis Today and discuss a way forward that doesn’t see the legal fraternity benefit while St Francis grows poorer in infrastructure and decency.
Something has to be done to improve infrastructure and it needs to be done by the townsfolk, not the municipality who have been directed by Government to spend 80% of their funds with disadvantaged communities. It is extremely doubtful that if a similar vote were to be held in the future that the figures would be any different for it is apparent the majority want to see St Francis proper.
NOTE:
THE purpose of a Special Rates Area (SRA), which is based on international best practice, is to enhance and supplement municipal services and aims to achieve this through a co-operative approach in order to halt the degeneration of the area and facilitate upliftment, so promoting economic growth and sustainable development.
Please name and shame these undemocratic people who should be encouraged to sell up if they are so unhappy with the outcome.
All very well for you Miles, many of the residents here are trying to survive on a retirement plan they made many years ago. If you have a look around the non-yuppie areas of town this fact will be immediately obvious to you.
As for your suggestion of selling up and moving away, that remark I will treat with the contempt it deserves, although that is exactly what we have now done.
Your type of arrogance is becoming, unfortunately, all too prevalent here now.
Completely agree with you, Ian. To keep telling people to leave the country when they dare to criticise a particular party or its approach is just stupid. People who do this should take a long hard look at the effects of lack of foreign investment n this country. We can’t all live off surfing and cannabis forever.
Yes, something has to be done, but by the entire community. Why are the only the village and canals expected to cough up, when the entire area will benefit? Everyone must contribute, or no-one must. It’s very easy to talk about democracy if you’re not being financially affected, or expected to foot the bill.
Some serious misconceptions propagated in this article – a proper perspective and correction is indicated:-
The ‘Concerned Residents Association’ (CRA), and my ‘Question SRA St Francis’ FB Page, have always clearly stated that they are NOT AGAINST the SRA, but ARE AGAINST the way the SRA has been structured and the methods employed by the present SFPO incumbents.
This is something SFPO have never acknowledged, preferring to proceed regardless and on their own predetermined path. It is only now, when they appear to have been woken up to the real opposition to their SRA machinations by the service of court papers, that they want to talk.
St Francis Bay is one community, consisting not only of the Village and Canals, but it includes Santareme, Port, Airpark, Links and Riverside – to argue otherwise is disingenuous.
Any SRA will impact the whole community, and not only the Village and Canals. To claim that the present SRA as a democratic victory is likewise disingenuous.
St Francis Bay comprises approx. 3200 properties. After the failed first SRA voting process which did include all of St Francis Bay, SFPO undertook some gerrymandering, and a second vote covering only the 1600 properties in the Village and Canals yielded some 900 YES votes and 100 NO votes – the bare majority necessary to meet the 50%+1 requirement to establish a SRA in that part of St Francis Bay.
Hardly a democratic victory or process ?
Democracy in action is the service of court papers on the Municipality, SFPO and SFPO NPC to correct the situation and have the present SRA set aside.
‘St Francis Today’ is the mouthpiece of the SFPO and SRA, so it is surprising that SFPO have apparently not shared the CRA court papers with SFT so that a more balanced article could have been posted today. I suggest this omission is rectified.
Lastly, and apologies if I am being picky, or just plain wrong, but I cannot reconcile the percentages you have quoted in the article in support of the ‘democratic victory’; they appear inflated – please could you check ?
Since the CRA says that it supports the SRA, but not the limitation of the demarcated area to the Canals and Village, the SFPO and its supporters would be ecstatic if the CRA would help collect a yes vote from Santareme, St Francis-on-Sea, the Port, and Otters Landing to join the SRA. We could only get 19% of all property owners in these areas to vote in 2017 (12% voted yes and 7% voted no), with 81% not voting at all. That means that we would have had to get many more votes from the Canals and Village to offset their lack of interest in voting and supporting the restoration of our town’s infrastructure…we would of course have then been accused of overriding their interests. There was a clear message to us that there was little interest from those areas in participating at that time in a SRA. We saw little point in allowing these areas to cause the overall vote from the town to fail. We re-scoped the infrastructure restoration to benefit the Village and Canal property owners. According to the calculation we did on the levy revenue from each area, the levy we would collect from the Santareme to Otters Landing areas would be required for the restoration of their roads and the CCTV cameras. Very little would be left over for the river, spit and beach. This was made very clear at the public meetings we held in December 2017 and January 2018. In those meetings we asked the Canal and Village property owners to vote on exactly that…and they did! We also made it clear that we would turn our attention to reaching out to these areas and discuss how they could join the SRA once the SRA was operational. That is why Dave Harpur (Santareme property owner) volunteered to join the SFPO Association Committee. Dave is driving these interests forward now. The CRA might say that they support the SRA in principle, but these people did everything they could to muster a no vote in both rounds of voting. It is also clear that they have no idea how hard it is to reach 2,850 property owners in 6 weeks, never mind the 1,600 property owners in the Canal and Village areas, given the inaccuracy of contact details available on the Municipality’s systems that plagued our efforts in the first round of voting. Let’s get real here, the SFPO Association has one administrator (half-day) and the NPC has one project manager (full-time and funded by donations prior to the SRA). The rest are all volunteers. What kind of capacity do you think we have for the demands that these people make on us? They weren’t willing to help, only hinder. We had to phase the introduction of the SRA or it would simply never happen. We have never been presented with an alternative plan, only criticism. It is time to move on and persuade the rest of St Francis Bay to join in restoring and uplifting our town, and hopefully recovering some of the value we have lost on our properties over the past decade.
It appears that the CRA is not against the SRA but has certain other concerns. We now have an SRA. Surely representatives can get around a table and look for ways to iron out differences. Unbundling the SRA and then “maybe” starting again does not seem right.
I have knowledge of an estate in Gauteng where neighbours litigated and included the board of the Home Owners Association in the process. Total legal fees are currently over R2 million and the matter is ongoing. The HOA fees alone are around R650,000 and are being recovered via special levies.
Although I reluctantly voted ‘yes’, I was never really on board as regards the SRA because of living abroad, of living in the village and because the stated SRA infrastructure improvements were of minimal value to me. Now I suddenly learn and am informed of the existence of the CRA, it’s serving of papers, the fact that CRA ‘members’ are not paying the SRA levy, that the SRA levy is hidden and not outlined or mentioned in my municipal rates statements and of the shenanigans used in coming up with the ‘majority’. All very dodgy/shady to me now and yes I am certainly seriously concerned and would like to know how I may rescind my yes vote, join the CRA or at least refuse to pay my portion of the SRA, whatever that amount may be!