The 40 year Company man!

[Michael Alexander]

Think that this is an incredible milestone that was achieved....

This week , local longtime resident , Barend " Balletjies" Matthee completed 40 year service with the company.

Living all his life in the township, attending school and Appie training,  throughout the decades....

Sad thing being that as much as he  committed most of his adult life  to the company, he  will not be allowed to "retire" gracefully in "his" house, but will be forced to leave our town....

Congrats on the milestone!

[Mike Thurtell]

So although O'Mund has a town council, the company still decides who may and may not live in O'Mund?

[Adriaan Van Rooyen]

i think its a bloody disgrace.... 40 years ...for his effort they should give his house to him for free.... but as usual its all quite on the front nobody says a word ....  Congrats Balle ....

[Mike Thurtell]

Well as usual I'm still confused about O'Mund. So although there's a town council all the land and property is still owned by the company? No freehold? So if you start a business in O'Mund you must obtain permission from the town council and company? And then hope that the company rents a house/property to you? And obtain company permission to enter the town? And despite Namibia's Constitution the company may lawfully evict you when you reach retirement age even if you have nowhere to go to? Perhaps some amicus curiae are needed to sort this in the Constitutional Court?

[Adriaan Van Rooyen]

Nope Mike T,those days are gone,some pensioners actually came back to Oranjemund hire houses from whoever  and are quite happy here .The house balletjies stays in thats next to the Jasper house is destined for something else.You can actually stay if you want .

[Mike Thurtell]

Thanks Adriaan, I must have misinterpreted Mike's comments about being forced to leave town. Who owns the CDM houses now?

[Michael Alexander]

Clarity!

About 8 years ago, the mine believed that the diamonds on the land were almost depleted.

In order to let Oranjemund survive "post"  diamond mining, the mine established a joint venture, paid for the mine called OTMCO (Oranjemund Town Management Company) . They brought in all kinds of professional folk....

OTMCO was hoping that the mine would hand over all the infrastructure to them in the coming years and then they would "sell" it on, making money for the "er, uhm" council to sustain the town...

Along came the recession, The mine shut down and the town became one scary place to reside..

In the meantime, due to the fact that the mine believed the town's day's were numbered they allowed the people to move into different graded houses, obviously with most moving out of the smaller units into better units.... this helped the company "sustain" their better houses..... only downside being that 1st and 2nd avenue, with parts of the east houses started to represent The Lebanon during the late 80's .....

Coupled to this move, a large number of Government officials were allowed to move into empty mine houses, this also included a very large number of private folk, including pensioners were also allowed to "rent" houses from the mine......

Fast forward a couple of years, enter a Scottish Surveyor.....

Realizing that the mined beaches that were mined 40/50 years ago and had now created "new" beaches that were in some cases 200m further out into the ocean than they were in the 1950's. All those old sea walls and the process of dumping mine dumps into the ocean during the early years had created new beaches....... for almost the entire length of the old mined out areas..... from old 50G right up to 2 Plant..... we call this beach accretion ...... who would have thought....

Meanwhile, the diamond market started to pick up, the R/$ rate looking good for mineral exporters..... coupled with new Orange River plants ....... the mine was on the up..... the mine needed to expand.....

Back at the ranch, the proclamation of Oranjemund was in full swing........ the proverbial bull had bolted and there was no turning back......

The irony being, as we old timers all know, diamonds are forever and you always  have a 7 year plan...... we have had recessions before and we have the "diamonds running out in a few years" before.... we knew this....

So the mine has new projects and new deposits to mine, now they need their houses back..... but it is not so easy.....

Meanwhile, OTMCO was dissolved, local elections are held and SWAPO form the council...... Not a bad group of people in my opinion, however, from a personal perspective, it always irked me that you needed a political party to run a town..... I do not agree, a town should be run by the locals, not  by a party.....

Oranjemund being unique..... in this sense.... seeing as the majority of the folk that live here, are not Oranjemunders....... they are merely here for the work and have residences outside of the  town.........

Then we hit a stalemate..... the mine cannot go back on it's word to normalize the town..... and  it's monthly cost's in running the town are in excess of N$6 million a month...... The budgets that are used to run the town are downsized and money is tight..... a number of green spots and children's play parks are turning grey, whilst places that are favoured are kept green....

The mine announces that there are confirmed diamonds resources available until 2030....... Wow! If only they had asked the old timers 8 years ago....... In fact there are tales  of the diamond deposits lasting until 2050...

If you had read the book about Sammy Collins and the King of Sea Diamonds, one would read at the conclusion of the book, "that the value of all the diamonds in that ocean is worth more than all the gold ever mined on the Witwatersrand"

So  now the council owns all the land, well in theory, and the mine owns 95% of all the buildings in the town , and it would appear that both have different agenda's

In fact the local council managed to "sell/auction" a couple of plots of land of the certain individuals..... but a lot of locals were not impressed, they never knew about this and further more how was this process done? Who were the connected people who got those few plots....? Questions lingering...

A person I know went to one of the community meetings and informed me the next morning that they were told that it costs, wait for it, wait for it N$250 000 to service a plot? WTF? I was sure that I was being told a white lie..... a 2nd person confirmed this, How on earth do you justify that pricing? At the most, it cannot cost more than N$50 000 to service a plot.

Who was getting the contract to service the plots?

As somebody mentioned to me in the discussion, "Something smells rotten in the state of Denmark"

Where are we at the moment, well the tender for the installation of water meters has gone out and there is also movement on the installation of  power meters...... we await with abated breath to see who get's to "manage" this important resource...

The mine is in the process of getting "private" folk out their houses....... and will be needing to build sooner or later...

I have heard rumours that The council has some wicked plans that involve idiotic ideas of building a casino, hotel and another golf course, Attracting more business to Oranjemund........ But for all the clever free thinking, nobody seem's to understand the following.....

There is only one/single cash source in this town..... THE MINE, it matters not how many golf  courses, casino's ,business's and houses you build here, you only get one paymaster.......

So, Mike in essence that is what is a happening to your old town.....

[Bertie Horak]

Thanks for clearing that up, Mike. Was wondering about this as well.  Now... under which group does E10/11 fall??? 

[Michael Alexander]

Thanks for clearing that up, Mike. Was wondering about this as well.  Now... under which group does E10/11 fall??? 

That would be a standard company owned house, currently residing on council land...... with one company employee sleeping within.....

[Bertie Horak]

So I'll just have to keep waiting.... 
Thanx Mike.

[Adriaan Van Rooyen]

maybe you should get a nice tan tan as well.... while you are waiting ...and a new name ..hehe like Simon ...or something like that...lol