When Guy and I arrived on site this morning, two of our newly erected balusters seemed to have been stolen off the west side of the beerhall. Just as I was about to phone Robyn and Gareth who were doing collection rounds with this horrible news, Lawrence arrived and reassured us that the two balusters in question had been taken off yesterday evening as they needed to be adjusted with spacers. What a relief! The idea that the community might already have started to dismantle our work had made my stomach sink. The theft of the steel
is a real possibility which we have faced up to, but I wasn’t expecting it to happen so soon. The other thing that greeted us was the enormous pile of rubbish left by the front end loader which was meant to have been collected by trucks first thing this morning. Mr Cindi and Stan had been turned away by the man in charge at the construction compound, so as soon as Lawrence had located our tireless ANCYL volunteers and we’d set them up digging holes for trees, Mr Cindi and I went to enquire at the council. Before setting off, though, we had a rather disturbing first-hand
experience of the spinning we have heard so much about. A white Clio with three guys inside screeched and slid and revved in the widened road area between Mr Cindi’s house and the beerhall. It seemed as though they were expressing aggressive, almost violent, disapproval of what we were doing. Eventually I felt brave enough to pull out my camera and video them, just as their ‘performance’ came to an end. Oy vey! My resolve to do something about a turning circle in this area has hardened! We had no luck at the council as Stuma, the energetic
guy from housing who’d helped Robyn and Cindi make the deal yesterday, was on a course. Just as we were leaving, Mr Kwelamtini strolled over (fresh from a meeting about renaming the East Rand Hospital – it’s apparently between ‘Ruth First’ and ‘Dr Gama’). Together with a woman, presumably also a councillor, who joined us, we proceeded to make some calls to sort out the problem of our mound of rubbish. By the end, we had opened two possible routes to a solution – one through the contractors who’d originally agreed to help (though Kwelamtini reported to me in the af
ternoon that Siegfried, the guy who’d made the agreement to help, had been reported on by his junior whom Cindi and Stan had encountered this morning and was in trouble) and the other through the roads agency. Nothing would happen before Monday, though. A call from Robyn sent me to Mac Steel in Wadeville to pay for and thus ensure delivery on Monday of our outstanding steel – we’d got the news at the braai yesterday that they wouldn’t give us a donation, but their reduced price was cheaper than Fleet Steel’s. I just hope that the delays are worth the R450 w
e will be saving. The salesman was mumbling, flu-ey and inefficient and the bad news was that seven of our 12 flat lengths will only arrive on Wednesday due to stock problems. If January doesn’t weld like a demon I suspect we might have to put up a temporary hand rail in some places for the launch. Back at site, Guy and Lawrence’s planted vygies sat proud and green in their tyre planter/bollards and the the primed silhouette of Veli’s mural seemed full of potential. This mural of a young man giving a power salute is what remains of our decision to strip down the layering of historical images on the building. The value of this is that it fixes the structure less – is less didactic, perhaps – while the image we’ve chosen seems not only to embed a bit of history (it comes from the photographs of the Cillié commission into the 1976 student uprising) but in an ambivalent way that is open to interpretation seems to offer a message of self-empowerment, purpose and agency. We had hotdogs for lunch at Lizzy’s again. Abel told me that he and his Youth League cadres want to start an NGO to carry on planting trees, and so on, after the project and that they need access to the internet to do some research. What luck that an internet connection has just been installed at Anthony’s – I told them about it and that they could use it. We also talked about putting together a write-up on the project to go with their certificates of participation explaining the nature of the experience they’d gained. They were very keen on getting this documentation. Finally Robyn and Gareth arrived, slightly hysterical, having completed a tour of the east rand, and with car and trailer stuffed full of planting material, instant lawn and other delights. We set about planting the trees and laying the lawn. There is something very hopeful and promising about planting a tree. The three trees opposite the swings were first and they looked great – they are part of an extension of the building into the landscape and will form a still echo of the motion of the swings away from and towards the edge of the building. Then came the clump of trees on the north west corner of the park. In the absence of top soil promised by the contractors who were meant to do the clearing this morning, Wandile, one of our faithful KT Working Group supporters, made a plan and got a neighbour to agree to our using a pile of top soil that had been gathering weeds up the road. Amos and the volunteers very efficiently moved wheelbarrow loads of the stuff to where we needed it as filler under the grass. As we were doing the final touches to the lawn, a local kwaito star and his entourage arrived for a photo shoot against the building in the golden-pink evening light. We were delighted with this endorsement from Chisa-Boy! (Khula was meant to meet us on site this morning after a meeting with the contractor for his paired project, but never arrived – not the first time we’ve been let down by him.)
When Guy and I arrived on site this morning, two of our newly erected balusters seemed to have been stolen off the west side of the beerhall. Just as I was about to phone Robyn and Gareth who were doing collection rounds with this horrible news, Lawrence arrived and reassured us that the two balusters in question had been taken off yesterday evening as they needed to be adjusted with spacers. What a relief! The idea that the community might already have started to dismantle our work had made my stomach sink. The theft of the steel 
is a real possibility which we have faced up to, but I wasn’t expecting it to happen so soon. The other thing that greeted us was the enormous pile of rubbish left by the front end loader which was meant to have been collected by trucks first thing this morning. Mr Cindi and Stan had been turned away by the man in charge at the construction compound, so as soon as Lawrence had located our tireless ANCYL volunteers and we’d set them up digging holes for trees, Mr Cindi and I went to enquire at the council. Before setting off, though, we had a rather disturbing first-hand 
experience of the spinning we have heard so much about. A white Clio with three guys inside screeched and slid and revved in the widened road area between Mr Cindi’s house and the beerhall. It seemed as though they were expressing aggressive, almost violent, disapproval of what we were doing. Eventually I felt brave enough to pull out my camera and video them, just as their ‘performance’ came to an end. Oy vey! My resolve to do something about a turning circle in this area has hardened! We had no luck at the council as Stuma, the energetic 
guy from housing who’d helped Robyn and Cindi make the deal yesterday, was on a course. Just as we were leaving, Mr Kwelamtini strolled over (fresh from a meeting about renaming the East Rand Hospital – it’s apparently between ‘Ruth First’ and ‘Dr Gama’). Together with a woman, presumably also a councillor, who joined us, we proceeded to make some calls to sort out the problem of our mound of rubbish. By the end, we had opened two possible routes to a solution – one through the contractors who’d originally agreed to help (though Kwelamtini reported to me in the af
ternoon that Siegfried, the guy who’d made the agreement to help, had been reported on by his junior whom Cindi and Stan had encountered this morning and was in trouble) and the other through the roads agency. Nothing would happen before Monday, though. A call from Robyn sent me to Mac Steel in Wadeville to pay for and thus ensure delivery on Monday of our outstanding steel – we’d got the news at the braai yesterday that they wouldn’t give us a donation, but their reduced price was cheaper than Fleet Steel’s. I just hope that the delays are worth the R450 w
e will be saving. The salesman was mumbling, flu-ey and inefficient and the bad news was that seven of our 12 flat lengths will only arrive on Wednesday due to stock problems. If January doesn’t weld like a demon I suspect we might have to put up a temporary hand rail in some places for the launch. Back at site, Guy and Lawrence’s planted vygies sat proud and green in their tyre planter/bollards and the the primed silhouette of Veli’s mural seemed full of potential. This mural of a young man giving a power salute is what remains of our decision to strip down the layering of historical images on the building. The value of this is that it fixes the structure less – is less didactic, perhaps – while the image we’ve chosen seems not only to embed a bit of history (it comes from the photographs of the Cillié commission into the 1976 student uprising) but in an ambivalent way that is open to interpretation seems to offer a message of self-empowerment, purpose and agency. We had hotdogs for lunch at Lizzy’s again. Abel told me that he and his Youth League cadres want to start an NGO to carry on planting trees, and so on, after the project and that they need access to the internet to do some research. What luck that an internet connection has just been installed at Anthony’s – I told them about it and that they could use it. We also talked about putting together a write-up on the project to go with their certificates of participation explaining the nature of the experience they’d gained. They were very keen on getting this documentation. Finally Robyn and Gareth arrived, slightly hysterical, having completed a tour of the east rand, and with car and trailer stuffed full of planting material, instant lawn and other delights. We set about planting the trees and laying the lawn. There is something very hopeful and promising about planting a tree. The three trees opposite the swings were first and they looked great – they are part of an extension of the building into the landscape and will form a still echo of the motion of the swings away from and towards the edge of the building. Then came the clump of trees on the north west corner of the park. In the absence of top soil promised by the contractors who were meant to do the clearing this morning, Wandile, one of our faithful KT Working Group supporters, made a plan and got a neighbour to agree to our using a pile of top soil that had been gathering weeds up the road. Amos and the volunteers very efficiently moved wheelbarrow loads of the stuff to where we needed it as filler under the grass. As we were doing the final touches to the lawn, a local kwaito star and his entourage arrived for a photo shoot against the building in the golden-pink evening light. We were delighted with this endorsement from Chisa-Boy! (Khula was meant to meet us on site this morning after a meeting with the contractor for his paired project, but never arrived – not the first time we’ve been let down by him.)
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