MISTY CLIFFS VILLAGE ASSOCIATION NEWSLETTER - November 2007
Editor: Tim Anderson

OUR CHAIRMAN EXPOSED

YOU wouldn't have known that Douglas Tunbridge, who normally resides at a house named "Dugbar" in Simon's Town, and who is our almost unimaginably effective chairman, in fact retains a personal consultant to advise him on many matters. The Spotted Eagle Owl, Doug's hitherto undisclosed source of wisdom, was well-meaningly caught on camera by a friendly neighbour and the Big Secret was out. Now we know that our Douglas is just an ordinary mortal.

THE THIRD GREAT EVENT

IT really doesn't matter how many Americans can't cope with their mortgages, nor is it of any consequence that Jacob Zuma is the incoming ANC leader (but did you know that he's been nominated for president of SARFU?) . . . none of this stuff matters BECAUSE the only really important event in the offing is the annual Misty Cliffs year-end thrash.

DO NOT MISS OUT ON THIS! The previous two super-casual bashes that we've held were nothing less than brilliant and everyone had a wonderful time renewing acquaintances and meeting new folk. Owners, residents, tenants and tranquilized children are all welcome.

Once again, our dear Lyn Mossop, bless her little socks, will be risking her delightful beach-front home by hosting and leading the catering for this stupendous event on Sunday 16 December from early evening (sixish). Our Village Association will fund the solid victuals but the guests should bring their preferred liquid ditto. Kids very welcome so long as they haven't yet reached the demolition phase of their maturation. Actual or prospective wives, husbands, mistresses, partners, etc, all welcome too.

Lyn is a professional caterer, but in foody business there's always the problem of knowing how many people will be coming. PLEASE let us know if you'll be attending, and how many of you. Send an email to lyn@mistys.co.za and mention if you need halaal, or kosher or veg.

LANDSCAPING

The environmental depredations caused by the Old Camp Road upgrade superficially look fixed-up because we intentionally let almost everything grow, just to get cover and minimise erosion. The task now is to identify and remove aliens and serious weeds, and then to plant a good selection of indigenous species.

To this end, without having to lean on him at all, one of our residents, Greg Shaw, has enthusiastically undertaken this task and magically induced the horticul-tural/landscaping/environmental studies faculty at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (wrongly known as the "Technikon" to many) to take on the whole job as a class project, all very correctly and thoroughly planned and executed. A Mrs de Villiers runs this course and one of our owners, Heidi Bertish, who is doing a landscaping diploma course in the faculty, will be on the spot to take part in the project.

The Municipality will be providing a good range of appropriate plants and saplings, and what they don't have we will buy out; we've already contacted suitable suppliers who will usefully discount to us.

Greg would have us believe that he's a maker of films, and the man behind some of the more horrifying investigative TV revelations, yet he is blessed with green fingers and incredible energy and enthusiasm. Maybe Misty Cliffs will become a sort of Fynbos Eden before long.

BUSH CLEARING

Too many Misty properties, mostly those not yet built on, are presently rather dangerously overgrown with alien bush, and in some cases the indigenous growth on properties has become excessively dense and therefore contributes to the fire danger as much as do burning aliens.

Some of our affected owners are very conscientious about having their plots cleared, but we've frequently had feedback that the job has been poorly done, or the contractor has failed to remove the cut material.

For this reason we are now offering an in-house clearing service using our own labour under Greg Shaw's well-informed gardener. We will guarantee prompt removal of cut material and we estimate that we can undertake even the most badly alien-infested plot for a maximum of R2500, which is substantially less than most professional services charge. We'll quote on less drastic jobs. We will shortly contact the owners of seriously infested or overgrown plots.

This plan should also enable us to take care of those (happily few) plots whose owners disregard all reminders and requests to clear aliens and make their plots less helpful to fire spreading.

We remind everyone yet again to ensure that their fire insurance conditions are appropriate. Claims can be repudiated if it is apparent that dense vegetation too close to a house contributed to damage. Similarly, an insurer can hold a neighbour liable for damage to the insured's property if that neighbour is found to have caused or aggravated the damage through excessive bush coverage. Owners of vacant plots may wish to consider taking liability cover in case of damage to a neighbouring building.

FIRE FIGHTING

The last Great Fire was in 2000 and we felt lucky that we escaped another one last fire season. It seems almost too much to hope that we'll escape again this summer, but here's hoping anyway. Nevertheless, in anticipation of a big fire (it would be big, with the bush so lush and dense after the copious winter rains) we are hopeful of establishing a more co-ordinated and effective system for dealing with it.

Bush fires almost always originate from the Redhill informal settlement and so we hope to intensify the system set up last year to have fire-watch patrolmen on the outskirts of the settlement. At the same time we are lobbying to ensure that firebreaks as required by law are cleared and maintained by the Public Works Department which rents the settlement property from its private owner.

With a good firebreak and early-enough warning of a fire starting it can be tackled before it gets out of hand - once a fire gets big and is being driven by a stiff south-easter, even the widest firebreak is easily leap-frogged by burning fragments.

We will shortly be meeting with the SPA and the Scarborough people to formulate a co-ordinated approach. We are also hopeful of acquiring proper fire hoses, now that we have regulation fire hydrants along Old Camp Road. We understand that the Fire Department can train some of our people in using and stowing hoses. We have some concern about the flow of water available and will be having this tested soon.

COPING WITH OFFICIALDOM

As mentioned in our previous newsletter we are being increasingly beset by municipal and other bureaucratic requirements requesting or inviting our input. These matters cannot be ignored without potentially prejudicing us, but sensible responses often require specialized expertise, legal knowledge and insight into governance situations. All residents-type associations are similarly challenged.

The most effective way of dealing with this growing challenge is for the various associations to work collectively. The total number of people thereby represented is in the hundreds of thousands and likely to include folk with appropriate expertise to help constructively with formulating intelligent input. Perhaps more importantly, such large collectives wield considerable clout and would be difficult for the politics of local government to disregard.

As collectives there is the Far South Community Forum (FSCF) which comprises associations representing all areas south of a line running approximately from Muizenberg across to Hout Bay. On a still-larger scale is the Greater Cape Town Civic Alliance (GCTCA) which embraces all organized residents' groups within the Unicity jurisdiction. After a rather languid start both these bodies are up and running and we feel pretty confident that they will prove effective.

The GCTCA is preparing a formal complaint, and constructive suggestions for remedial action, regarding the municipal fiasco over the valuations underlying the new property ratings. We are hopeful that this will be more effective than the chorus of so-far disregarded bleats from individual irate owners.

BABOONS

For the last couple of months baboons have not troubled us. This seems to prove the wisdom of shelling out for additional monitors, and training them properly. After many months of frustrating disappointment, this is also a victory for the Baboon Fund to which Misty Cliffs contributes. Against the odds, wily William and the female and infant with him have been successfully driven back into the Reserve, largely by the even more wily Mzukhise who is undoubtedly the best baboon monitor on the Peninsula.

A proposal has been made to discourage baboons with the increasingly popular rotating strobe lights being used to keep birds off buildings etc. These devices are known by various names such as "rerouter" and "Eagle Eye". Despite some investigation we have not yet been able to obtain firm information that these flashing lights are actually effective. If they do work we rather feel that we don't want to chase birds and other animals away from Misty Cliffs which is fundamentally a nature and conservation area. It's the "wild life" that gives Misty its sense of place. In any case we have also been advised that baboons are much too smart to be put off by these devices for more than a very short time, if at all.

In between our newsletters you may find more-up-to-date information on baboons and their movements on the Scarborough website, www.scarborough.org.za

BIRDS

On the subject of birds we are very concerned about the increasing numbers of pied crows congregating between Misty Cliffs and Kommetjie. These crows are undoubtedly raiding birds nests for fledglings and also taking smaller adult birds. Does anyone have any suggestions about discouraging them? (We are in a nature area and bright ideas along the lines of mass poisoning would land us in deep official trouble if we tried it.)

WHALES

We are keeping our eyes peeled for incidents of whale harassment by aircraft. A particular gyrocopter has been photographed and identified doing just that and we are investigating possibilities for bringing the pilot to book. It seems this individual is well-known in flying circles for irregular radio procedure and disregard of certain regulations.

RECYCLING

Our previous newsletter enthused about the municipal recycling scheme launched in our area and a couple of other test areas. But this fizzled immediately, apparently because not all participants in the collection/disposal chain had been adequately briefed. The scheme has not been dropped; the Municipality is determined to get it going, perhaps not so much for citizen's benefit as for the alarming situation of the municipal garbage sites being nearly full already, and no other sites available. An overwhelmingly excessive volume in dump sites is occupied by plastic waste, mainly packaging, most of which was unnecessary in the first instance. Let's be patient!

SECURITY

Holiday season approaches at speed and this means a likely uptik in crime, mainly because holiday-makers are notoriously careless. If you let your Misty house to visitors do please drill them fiercely about closing and latching all windows ("criminals" include baboon raiders) and arming the house alarms. Don't forget to warn them that anyone found leaving trash in a plastic bag outside the house will be fed without trial to our specially trained and terrifyingly bulimic Great White.

We may derive some security benefit from the Neighbourhood Watch which Scarborough is reviving; on the other hand, hopeful crooks may back off from Scarborough and concentrate on Misty. We are likely to set up our own neighbourhood watch but in our case the problem is that we have relatively few full-time residents to take part in watching.

During October the area covered by Scarborough Security Services registered four break-ins/burglaries, two thefts from vehicles, and one vehicle stolen.

OMBUDSMAN

One or two of our owners have had good experiences with the City Ombudsman after frustrating failure in dealing with municipal blunders through the "proper channels". One resident struggled with the municipality for 12 months to get a patently wrong water bill put right. After numerous emails, faxes, letters and phone calls to various officials (all very polite and sympathetic) the Ombudsman's office achieved success within a few days. About a month after this victory a certain senior official phoned the resident and said he had just received the first letter of complaint sent nearly a year earlier, and which seemed to have been creeping through the internal post system in the meantime; this person was unaware that the matter had been delayed and unaware that it had eventually been put right. We are privately advised that there is a chronic discontinuity between the call centre and certain of the municipal departments.

The Ombudsman is currently Mr Mbulelo Baba contactable on 021-400-5486. He is in the Civic Centre.

SUBSCRIPTIONS

Have you come to light with your R300 subscription yet? Please don't delay - we don't want to be forced to skimp on the victuals for the year-end party. Please email a request for the banking details if you require them.

NEW COMMITTEE MEMBERS

Because of its increasing workload your hardworking committee is delighted to report the co-option of three new members: Tony Turner, who has in effect been part of the committee since the beginning of the year, will keep us on the straight and narrow as our unofficially official Public Officer, as well as supporting us in all matters financial. Greg Shaw with his bright green fingers has become our Environmental Officer's right hand man, and Donna Da Silva has become our "Baboon Lady" to manage this portfolio and raise funds towards sustaining the monitors (you may expect a call from her soon!). Tony Da Silva has also joined us and will be responsible for special projects.

CONTACTS

Please direct all brilliant ideas, unbrilliant criticisms, and interesting information to one of these people:

Doug Tunbridge, chairman, 021-786-3842 or 083-250-3452.
Tony Turner, money minder, 021-780-1511 or 086-672-1380.
Tim Anderson, scribe & environment stuff, 021-674-2834 or 072-128-2319.