Of course, it is a sad reality that the condition of Durban’s CBD is a pale shadow of its former self (The Mercury, October 10). But nobody should be surprised about this despite the warnings given more than 30 years ago.
In 1992, influential liberal city councillor Peter Mansfield warmly promoted the idea of having informal trade in the streets of the city centre. He said the changing political and social situation of the time needed to reflect that reality. After Mansfield’s idea had been in operation for some months, I put it to him in the Council that Smith and West Streets resembled a “bizarre bazaar” as tables with fruit, vegetables and perishables clogged the sidewalks and generated trash of every description.
Since then, the bizarre bazaar and its attendant social ills have succeeded in negatively transforming a once-prized real estate area and closing down all the iconic shops and stores in the process, Adams Booksellers being the last to exit. So, of course, the once enthusiastic expression of “going to town” has long since lost its allure, replaced by shopping malls which now thrive in most suburbs.
But the plight of the CBD could have been avoided. I recall a report by City Water Engineer Neil McLeod in 1992, circulated to all 30 councillors, of what he noted while attending a conference in Nairobi. He pointed out that no informal trade was permitted in the city’s main streets. Instead, it was confined to a specific area adjacent to the CBD.
If that policy had been applied in Durban, the CBD might have been spared the bizarre bazaar syndrome. But the lack of political will and failure to assert town planning regulations account for its plight. What the late deputy mayor Nomvusa Shabalala defended as the “vibrancy” of the CBD is actually a squalid, loss-making investment zone deterring tourists and reducing municipal revenues.
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