A different view on current affairs & history
Main picture: Voelvlei Dam
South Africans yearned for the ANC’s NEC meeting last weekend to do the right thing. The ANC failed at that puny hurdle either due to loyalty to their leader or the simple reason that they too are captured. Neither did Zuma fall on this sword. Instead he sat impassively at the meeting while his Comrades vilified him. What has not yet been found is incontrovertible evidence of Zuma’s hand in this malfeasance.
What chance is there that the smoking gun will ever be found?
Main picture: Transnet’s new locomotives on which the Gupta’s will receive a commission of R10m per unit
The Great Depression lasted from 1929 to 1939, and was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world. It began after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors. Over the next several years, consumer spending and investment dropped, causing steep declines in industrial output and employment as failing companies laid off workers. By 1933, when the Great Depression reached its lowest point, some 15 million Americans were unemployed and nearly half the country’s banks had failed.
The motto of the era was “Use it up — wear it out, — make it do or do without!”
This photographic depiction of the era vividly highlights the devastation that it left in its wake in America.
Main picture: Amongst the countless millions reduced to penury
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This well-known hotel has operated under numerous names over its life. Amongst its guises was a naval training base during WW2. For some unknown reason, the hotel never attracted sufficient clientele to be able to be financially viable. Nevertheless, it is an icon for many of the older generation who would attend functions there, including myself.
Main picture: The art deco swimming pool in its heyday
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Main picture: Tractors ready for export
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Perhaps it is one’s cavalier attitude to law enforcement during one’s youth, but generally the most severe traffic fines that one receives is during that period of one’s life. In my case, I was extremely lucky and in Blaine’s case, well, not so lucky.
Main picture: Blaine with the same Beetle many years after this incident or the tale of the Beetle that wouldn’t die
Just as the slump and ultimate decline in the wool industry in the late nineteenth century made the future economic prospects of Port Elizabeth bleak, so too does the motor vehicle industry’s relocation to the economic hub of South Africa portend a grim future for the town.
After the booming nineteen fifties and sixties, the seventies awoke to new realities which the City Fathers had not contemplated: the decline of its manufacturing base. This process was ineluctable as the vortex of demand in Gauteng sucked manufacturers ever inward. Far from its market, aspersions were cast on Port Elizabeth’s manufacturing credentials. Instead of adapting to this reality, it persevered with the previous one. Simply put, its strategy should have been a focus on economic activities decoupled from Gauteng such as tourism, medicines manufacture and development, movie making, technology development et al.
In retrospect, the stages of development of the motor vehicle industry in Port Elizabeth are now at an end. Hence it allows one to analyse dispassionately it’s still warm corpse.
This blog deals with its stages of development as a requiem mass is held after the demise of yet another motor manufacturing icon, General Motors, at the age of 95 years.
General Motors is a fitting metaphor of this process and is replete with all these elements.
Main picture: General Motors’ factory
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Today nothing remains of this railway line which wended its way through the sylvan town of Walmer in the early twentieth century. Not even a memory, the sound of the whistle or the smell of the coal-fired engine which traversed the arboreal streets such as Villiers and Water Roads all the way to the municipal boundary at 14th Avenue recalls this miniature train.
Main picture: Narrow gauge train leaving the Main Station in Port Elizabeth. The engine is a NG13/16 class Garratt
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Originally the sea waves crashed to shore where Strand Streets lies today. Devoid of jetties, piers or breakwaters, the beaches stretching from the current Campanile to the South End were used as landing beaches.
In 1857, this situation was to change. Ultimately the sandy beaches along this stretch of coast was to be replaced by a sea wall. Exactly why it was named a quay and not an embankment cannot be ascertained.
Main picture: Victoria Quay from the North Jetty
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In his thesis on the development of the Port Elizabeth Harbour, Mr E.J. Inggs raises some interesting facts not only about the convoluted path to the ultimate construction of a harbour but also the operation and importance of Port Elizabeth’s harbour to the Cape Colony.
Also of considerable interest is his discussion of the issue of the wage levels of the Mfengu Beach Labour, as he calls the cargo loaders and unloaders. Their remuneration perfectly reflects what Economics 101 identifies as a fundamental factor in economics; supply and demand.
Main picture: Mfengu unloading cargo from surfboats