On 27 February 2023, OCA member Janet Cronje wrote the following to our ward councillor: Dear Cllr and Carolyn, We have heard nothing new about the Observatory pool in the last while. Can you share with me where the City is in terms of the procurement process for the fixing of the pool? Please would…
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BLANK BOOKS – 30% OFF ALL Fiction Until 9th April 2023
We’ve been busy tidying up and reorganizing the bookshop after a great season – thank you so much for all your support. The stocktake has been intense with the amount of books we have available (over 18 000 books at last count), but quite necessary as we continue with our strategy of making all…
StoryWalk
Observatory Library planned a fun StoryWalk for the community during South African Library Week highlighting the theme, “Libraries telling powerful stories!” We approached certain businesses in Lower Main Road to participate and feature a storyboard of the children’s story, “Where’s Lulu?” published by BookDash. The shops on the library map were very eager to be…
T.R.A.S.H. APRIL CLEAN-UP DAY
Come and lend a hand on our little urban River for our monthly River Clean up in partnership with the Observatory community on Saturday 1 April 2023. We start, as always, from our banner opposite the Hartleyvale Hockey Stadium on Liesbeek Parkway from 09h00. Drop in any time for an hour or two to help…
Appeal to support our campaign to preserve the environment and heritage
Dear supporters Those of you in Cape Town might think the campaign and our court case is over because you see the Amazon Golgotha rising over the flood plain and because of the very bad press we received over the Cape High court findings released in November 2022. That is not the case at all….
Updates regarding the SAHRA grading
The SAHRA says that ‘hundreds of years of development has severely eroded any tangible elements remaining on the site’. We never disagreed with that. The point is that the heritage on the River Club site is intangible heritage associated with cultural memory and the Open Space of the site. SAHRA agrees that the site is…
Letter to the Tatler
Dear Editor, I am a Pinelands resident and I pass the Black River, often many times a day, especially on Raapenberg Road and on the Raapenberg offramp from the N2. The sewage stench from this river is unbearable and has been going on for many weeks. I pity the golfers who use the St. Davids…
WC Food Forum Report: March 2023
Dear Forum members, The report from the WC Food Forum held on the 23rd of March 2023 is attached HERE. Many thanks to those who attended and presented. Please note that the next Forum meeting will take place on Thursday the 4th of May 2023 (2pm – 3:30pm) to accommodate the public holidays at the…
The best things in life are free: In praise of our libraries
Nick Dall – 21 March 2023 In 1761, a German colonist by the name of Joachim von Dessin bequeathed a few thousand books, two “skulls of savages”, a collection of “native craft” and a fund for the development of a library at the Cape. It took a while, but a library was eventually established in…
Fight poverty, not the poor: We who live in shacks are not a threat to society
Thapelo Mohapi – 12 March 2023 As people get more desperate, more hungry and more hopeless about South Africa, society is likely to become more violent. The most important way to make this society safer for us all is to restore trust in the present and hope for the future. Everywhere in the world the…