LETTER: Who’s to blame for inner city decay?

Graham Boynton’s take on the demise of Durban’s CBD, particularly the decay of the fine colonial city hall and other historic buildings, refers (“A nasty and neglected city: the Durban Moment has passed”, March 8). 

The Durban Moment narrative is revealing of early hopes to resist, as was Steve Biko’s movement. In hindsight, one questions whether either fundamentally affected the current political outcome. Rick Turner, and of course Biko’s sacrifices, are rightly invested with great respect. But the context of 1970 contained a cauldron of contending players, anxious to stem the tide shifting inexorably to Nationalist power. Confirming the white electorate’s endorsement of enhanced racial fragmentation was evident in Hendrik Verwoerd’s 1966 landslide victory.

Under John Vorster, uncompromising apartheid and political bantustan homelands followed, though Natal’s mainly English voters, led by Douglas Mitchell, held to the tradition of knowing “their Zulus” and their best interests. Repression of significant energies followed — the ANC was banned and Nelson Mandela locked away — the Natal Indian Congress and Black Sash harassed, Liberal Party closure in 1968, the influence of burgeoning trade unions contained, (though legalised a decade later).

Some university campuses, and later black students, tested education controls. But it must surely be acknowledged that mistakes were made. A political vehicle to co-ordinate these resistant energies might have stood up to an increasingly efficient state, infiltrating and legislating, picking them off separately.

In Natal, most white people (I generalise) had first a sense of British colonial loyalty, second as Natalians even a hankering for independence; and only then, conditionally, as South Africans. Basically complacent, open for business and pleasure, their old colonial buildings were important symbols endorsing a fragile hegemony and history.

What one should now be asking is why these apparently much-cherished symbols were so easily abandoned? (Their neglect, the writer claims, replicates that of the country). An almost casual “walking away” by upmarket property owners, retail and hotel patronage led to a consequent collapse in CBD rates income, significantly affecting capacity to maintain clean, functioning streets, fine old buildings and urban squares. Neglect followed inevitably.

Without patrons, cherished CBD fabric comes rather to symbolise a past of exclusion and selfishness. And a cultural value system whose allocation of resources is seemingly now of little importance.

Rod Lloyd

Newlands, Cape Town

JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.​