Knysna is controlled. You are controlled. That’s no conspiracy theory. It’s simply fact.

The ANC wears its greed on its sleeve. The DA is more cunning but no less rotten. In the Western Cape, they for the most part, they control the media. In a small town like ours, truth is for sale – publications would battle to make profit if it weren’t for advertizing from Knysna Tourism and Knysna Municipality. Heaven forbid they tackle businesses who support the DA who in turn supports them. It’s about money. Furthermore, writer hacks would lose the source for much of their content if they dared to be real journalists.

Take heed of just some of what’s happened:

• A municipal manager paid 7 figures to leave when he had only months left in his contract.
• R35 million in debt written off in December with no details given.
• Poor development planning (or was that corruption) has damaged Knysna and, especially, the small business owners who made up much of the heart of this town. Yet development in Rheenendal and Hunter’s Home is pushed despite so many Knysna homes standing empty.
• I question SANParks and Municipal Manager, Lauren Waring about the acres of destruction of the wetlands off George Rex Drive and i’m taken off the municipal mailing list again (last time they did that, i was demanding to know where Tourism’s monies were going).
• I request a breakdown of municipal salaries, our right by law, and Grant Easton, the accounting officer who is rumoured to earn R130 000 per month, does not respond.
• On that point, after all the hoo-ha, the Tourism Board has still not supplied the budget breakdown. It’s been more than 2 years! The R2 million Tourism budget surplus got ‘irresponsibly spent’ yet no one took responsibility. Instead, the Knysna Tourism Board gave a 3-month golden handshake to their ex-CEO after they’d found him guilty on 4 charges of gross misconduct.
• Where’s the benefit of our twinning agreements, the trips by our politicians and Tourism to Jamaica and France?
• A property developer with obvious conflicts of interests is awarded a tended by the municipality to redefine our town’s boundaries.
• A mayor (Georlene Wolmarans), Deputy Mayor (Esme Edge) and Speaker (Michelle Wasserman) can lie to us and fail us yet keep on earning their big salaries.
• The Knysna SAPS is rotten to the core. If there were good cops, they’d arrest the bad cops. The DA refuses to take them on even though their job is to lead and protect us.
• Helen Zille is a liar. She’s for big business. Helping the little guy is a BEE show. Her party promises responses to queries and complaints within 2-6 weeks – they haven’t answered mine in years. Indeed, they have deliberately isolated me the same way they’ve cut off other opposition on the Garden Route.

I was painfully reminded of all this when i saw the DA in blue hanging outside SuperSpar at Knysna Mall. Elections are coming up again. Soon people will vote according to colour, greed and fear again. It’s the repeated tragedy of South Africa’s so-called democracy that ensures that we remain controlled, useless to the direction of our own lives. It is a tragedy that is deserved. We are our own worst enemy.

I have fought a severe, internal battle the past 2 months. It’s why i’ve been quieter on the activism front. ‘You can only help those who will help themselves’ has been my motto for a long time…a motto i have disobeyed as i’ve rallied between logic and wanting to do the right thing. Doing the right thing is damn hard to do alone.

This wasn’t a planned blog. I started typing my thoughts and before i knew it i was at the bottom, without a conclusion. So i’ll substitute an ending with Greg Holden’s song, ‘The Lost Boy’. It says to me: Do not be controlled by apathy. Do not be controlled by fear. If anything, be controlled by hope and love…and believe in them enough to be controlled by your own actions…

I left my home still as a child
I walked a thousand sorry miles
to wait for my father to gather up his tools
He said my boy you’ve got to run
Don’t wait for me, don’t wait for mum
We’ll come get you when it’s safe for us to leave

So I waited many years
Held back the pain behind my tears
for my father to come find me like he said
In that time I was alone,
so many years without my home,
I made brothers of a different kind instead

At the time I didn’t know
just how hard the wind could blow,
towards disaster, and the things that I would see
I never found my father
I never found my mother either
But I know that in my lifetime I will be
a hero to the masses

To those born without chances
there’s a freedom that everyone deserves
I know there’s greed and there’s corruption
I’ve seen death and mass destruction
but I’m telling you and I hope that I am heard

I will not be commanded
I will not be controlled
I will not let my future go on
without the help of my soul

I will not be commanded
I will not be controlled
I will not let my future go on
without the help of my soul