KNYSNA NEWS - "You know, this used to be a lekker little town," sighed Nick, a Knysna resident of over three decades languidly propped up against a face-brick pillar nursing his beer.
Not a ground-breaking statement by any standards, but more telling than one might think.
Nick's "lekker" and "little", as two peas in this contextual pod, speak of a time when Knysna was balmy, beguiling and buoyant. When in thinking of it, terms like genial and moony sprung to mind with mental snapshots of a creatively happening coastal haven that made simply everyone go Aaaaw. But, former Knysna-philes like Nick bemoan the fact that over the past few decades, congeniality has gradually been usurped by greed and a once cherished cheeriness by a looming sense of alienation and aloofness.
It is a town that has lost its identity, they say. Constantly sinking lower into the space between chairs, precariously propped up on the one end by a renegade Plett-ification of sanitised tiled interiors and stylised wattle and chipped-stone facades. And on the other end, they'll tell you, by the residues of those crafty old tie-dyed trimmings that once afforded Knysna its unique pace, bearing and colour. What we see today are mere remnants of an otherworldly sparkle which has long since been transported westward to a still wild-at-heart seaside sanctum called Wilderness (more Knysna than Knysna could probably ever be again, or ever has been – and we're talking has been here by the sound of it).
And diagonally opposite the candy-coated contingent cast in pastel-coloured sweaters holding cocktails aloft at the country clubs, sit the hunched cluster of disgruntled blue-collar laggards left floundering in the wake of the mid-2010's building boom. Both factions but spitting distance from the silent, huddled masses on the hilltops surrounding eastern Knysna who have yet to find a voice at all.
Never shall they meet the murmurings predict. All in all, not an appetising trough of fodder for a promising cultural prognosis.
Nonsense I say. All destinations could choose to play victim to its stereotypes – cute little coastal enclaves included. Everything is certainly not lost. In order to regain its former charm, all Knysna needs to do is to loosen up a little; establish a proper public transport system and slap in a bypass to free up the main road for a thriving sidewalk culture and night time economy (possibly shake the cobwebs out of Buffalo Bay for the odd beach bash while we're at it); stave off corruption in local government; weave some more music and social events for all into the Oyster fest programme; keep the estuary swim-clean; prevent natural disasters; create more safe parks and greened leisure spots in town; alleviate the embarrassingly robust crime load (by perhaps having provincial traffic focus so sufficiently on something else other than road blocks for a start); keep indiscriminate and/or dubious construction contracts at bay…and our town will be as good as old.
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