Councillor Peter Myers

Knysna is ugly. Knysna is you and me. We’ve made ourselves this way.

It was a mistake for us citizens to allow politicians to hold our town’s heart. Their greed for ego and power was supported by us; by vote, bias, apathy, deliberate ignorance and inaction. To not take sides is as painful because that supports the status quo by ensuring that things stay the way they are. Their political rot is our rot. Until we accept that, we cannot improve our town which is directly linked to improving our lives.

I’ve been offline for months. Stepping away not only assists my survival after years of damage by crooks and the Knysna Fire but also assists perspective. Consequently, I go offline after this.

I feel compelled to write to you now because Knysna appears to be at an important crossroads. Some are finally seeing the nightmare I tried so hard to show them. There’s power in repetition and more voices expressing the same facts or thoughts. Maybe it’s only through a multitude of sources that the majority can accept reality.

But even open eyes only sometimes see what’s in front of them instead of also seeing what’s ahead and behind. Seeing our lives in every direction provides context and makes us whole.

Knysna is experiencing major political upheaval, so much so that it’s a social earthquake too. The separation by association is immediately apparent but it’s dangerous that race and wealth have been introduced, likely to obscure what matters most which is the bigger fact of immediate and continuous corruption.

Eleanore Spies

On one side of the divide is DA Mayor Eleonore Spies and her partner, Councillor Rowan Spies. They are consolidating their power. That’s risky business because it could allow convenient allies and flip-floppers to officially or unofficially grab some of that power away. Nevertheless, when politicians get a hand into public salary, they often seem to do everything they can to hang on. But, right now, the more important fact is that national leaders of the Democratic Alliance are supporting them. Think hard about that.

On the other side of the black hole we’re slipping towards, newly demoted ex-DA Deputy Mayor Peter Myers and his wife, Candace Myers, appear to be rallying supporters against Mayor Spies.

These are more battles of personal convenience than battles for us. If it were for us, we’d know exactly what is happening. If they were our representatives, they’d be 100% transparent regarding the past 6 years of Democratic Alliance rule which has included BOTH Spies and Myers, a period during which I believe there have been no political parties, only cross-party power groups of temporary friendships at our expense. That the DA, ACDP and ANC, for example, are separate entities, made good or bad by the eyes of the beholder, is one of the greatest cons ever perpetrated against the South African public.Their finger-pointing is a great misdirect so that we don’t notice whilst our lives get smaller and smaller, robbed by all sides.

Will Knysna be gullible again, taking sides for the convenience of outrage for the sake of hollow friendships?

My activism began with the illegality of Knysna Tourism, an illegally funded organisation that sometimes benefited ‘friends’ before our town. Myers fought against me, on the side of MEC Alan Winde and, later, Spies. Myers, now being against Winde and Spies, doesn’t make him on my side. That’s another point for you to think about. He also never acted on my complaint against the illegally contracted Director Community Services Dawie Adonis and so many other important issues such as his party’s propaganda campaigns against me (in which he took part). It’s likely that his claim that Mayor Spies and Speaker Georlene Wolmarans used taxpayers monies for their personal legal bill is referring to me.

Yet now, when convenient, when he’s lost the latest DA faction war, he’s using some of these issues as weapons of defence and attack against his party.

As much as he fails to mention my part in fighting major maladministration and corruption, it’s more important to note that he’s not coming clean or apologising about his role within it.

This is not an anti-Myers blog. This is a please-open-your-eyes and don’t-be-biased blog. Ask questions. Demand transparency and accountability before blindly giving your support.

My eyes are wide open. This is what I see.

Truth is that no matter how hypocritical Peter Myers is, he’s repeating truths I’ve long shared with you. However improbable it may once have seemed, he’s now the carrier of some of them.

The uncomfortable truth is that the current problem is bigger than Myers and my personal feelings. Our town should be more important than any of our feelings!

Our heart is rotten. It will be used and abused by the Knysna Council until there’s no blood left. We will become weaker and weaker until we are only the skin of what we could have been.

Consequently, I ask you to give Myers conditional support and to keep shouting at the Knysna Council for answers.

Peter Myers, you and I are bound to be on opposite sides of the courtroom one day but that is not today’s battle. Whether it’s for yourself or Knysna, it’s more important that you fight hard and clever. Use all the resources at your disposal. And if you don’t consider that me as a witness is one of them, then you are even more in it for yourself than I think you are. As for your opponents alleging yet-to-be concluded Western Cape DA investigation into your complaints, that can only be pretence at fairness for the sake of their marketing image as they’ve failed to contact me regarding similar complaints lodged way before yours.

Knysna, the shouters are always the minority (and beware that the pseudo political party called the Knysna Ratepayers’ Association becomes the voice of one side of our town). Desmond Tutu said, “To be impartial… is indeed to have taken sides already… with the status quo.” Do not look at our lives as if what you do and say doesn’t matter. We MATTER. A stadium of vuvuzelas is more powerful than one singer in the bush.

Today, Knysna is ugly… but we can, again, make her, and ourselves, pretty.

PS: If you’re a newcomer to what’s happening, please search this website for the name of each person mentioned in this post. You will find many articles that will help teach you that political promises mostly lie.