Complaints Dept | Megan's Head

Water Tariff Middle Finger

On May 8, 2018

In Cape Town, complaints dept, political

This is an open letter to the City of Cape Town and local government.

Dear CoCT and all involved in the design and rollout of the new water tariff hike,

I want you to know that I have just done something radical. I have had my first five minute shower since September. I did not save one drop of grey water to use elsewhere. I know it is immature, but I needed to wash the unbelievably bitter taste out of my mouth and the itchy skin crawls off my bone dry body.

See, I have taken this drought very damn seriously. Our first attempts were haphazard and experimental, but now our water saving is totally on track. Our household has been consistent in using under 50l of water per person per day pretty much from the day the last severe water restrictions were announced. Our bath is filled with grey water for flushing, our pot garden is virtually dead, our stoep is covered in building dust and highway pollution but cannot be washed, our car sees water only when it rains and we have spent a fortune on drinking water for ourselves and our animals.

I must also state up front that I was, against the tide, in support of the scuppered water price hikes that would have seen home owners pay more for water based on the size and value of their property. I was so annoyed that the rich and privileged showed their ignorant and whining voices when this came up, and that it was these voices that won.

As punishment, your new sliding scale targets two kinds of people. 1. Those of us who have taken restrictions seriously. 2. The poor. No matter how I look at it, those who use the least amount of water will pay the highest prices. High users pay less. The more you use the less you pay. Am I missing something here?

In every way you favour the rich and powerful in our city and give the middle finger to the poor. And I am gatvol. Sies. Clean up your act.

Twitler Helen Zille

By megan

On March 23, 2018

In Cape Town, complaints dept, deeply personal, political

I have been stewing over Helen Zille’s latest twitter debacle. This is what she had to say about the families of those who died or whose health was severely compromised in the Life Esidimeni tragedy. Zille tweeted on Tuesday: “It is good that the families of the Life Esidimeni victims have received a measure of justice and compensation. I would like an answer to this question: What did they do, before these tragic deaths, to raise the alarm about their loved ones starving + living in profound neglect?”

Now Zille is no stranger to the arrogant, ill informed, rude, racist, anti-poor tweet and has been rapped over the knuckles on more than one occasion. Her biggest tweet scandal (up until now), which she fought to justify in an embarrassingly tenacious fashion, was that not everything to do with colonialism was bad. She just could not see how that would be hurtful and offensive to every single person of colour and their allies.

This time however, she has, in a tweet, highlighted exactly how utterly out of touch she is with how unseen, unheard and helpless the poor are. She imagines a world where everyone has the same ability to shout loudly and demand to speak to the manager. She comes from that world, where she can complain about things and be heard, seen and taken notice of.

Recently I have been to both Groote Schuur and a private medical hospital and the difference is beyond glaring. I am not dissing the utter magnitude of the success of Groote Schuur and all who work there, I am merely comparing the difference money can make. Carpets, new furniture, new equipment, more staff, better equipped nurses, more space, more people to talk to, more attention, more value to life. There are very sick people at Groote Schuur, from all over the country, receiving expert treatment from exhausted, underpaid, over worked practitioners, but the queues at the clinics are long, public transport unreliable, resources scarce. I am in awe at how successful the labyrinthian maze of Groote Schuur is. And that is one, huge, subsidised public hospital.

Helen Zille’s tweet is so completely rude and vile because she has no idea what it is like to be helpless and dependent on what is available. She has no idea what it is like to not be able to keep a sick family member alive if you have no money. She has no idea what a world without insurance or a hospital plan or transport or food looks like. She literally cannot imagine it. And she is in charge of the Western Cape. It makes me sick.

#DayZero – open letter to the City of Cape Town

By megan

On February 22, 2018

In Cape Town, complaints dept, political

Dear City of Cape Town

I am really in a very bad mood with you guys. Truth is, I feel like you are taking the piss, and I don’t think you should be taking anything right now. I am sitting here, sipping my bought water very slowly, trying not to sweat because I can’t shower, and failing to control my temper because I cannot believe your disgusting behaviour.

Without virtue signalling, like madam premier, I have been a dedicated and high performing water saver. We have drastically reduced our water usage, have systems in place to use all grey water and we buy drinking water for humans and pets. I support and encourage all efforts by our neighbours, friends and even further afield on social media, and I interact and intervene with people in public and work spaces to create further awareness.

Not that it matters, but I was one of the very, very few who was vocal in my support of increased water tariffs based on the value of my property, even though I knew the suggestion was because you guys were caught in a catch 22; asking for people to use less water meant you had created a cash flow problem and were getting less hard cash.

I was active in solving your mistakes when you installed our new water meter and it leaked. I was proactive in getting us back onto the system when you guys couldn’t see what the problem was, even though our meter hadn’t been read for over a year after being installed and our water was estimated.

I am perfectly comfortable with the effort I have made to bring my water usage down to the targets you have set every time they have changed, and I have been living fearfully with the idea of #DayZero as a real possibility.

So, now I feel you guys need to come to the party you forced me to attend.

Let’s start with your hideous, inappropriate mascot. Please explain who signed that off and then who executed it. How did that pass any kind of inspection? Who thought that was cool? Who pays for it? Honestly, I have seen better outfits at charity shops.

Let’s move on to the helicopter banner. Who is paying for the helicopter and banner that flies around our skies with Day Zero, Save Water on it. That’s it. How do you imagine justifying the cost of that? My brain hurts when I think about it. Help me understand how this is an effective part of your awareness campaign.

Finally, I see via the news yesterday that there is a glitch in your new water monitoring system that you have just switched over to and you will be charging us for water based on last year’s usage for the same month. So, last year our water meter was broken, and the reading was an estimation on the year before. Also, we will now not have an accurate (or even general) reading so we can see our usage and our water saving. Plus, water prices have gone up, so we will be paying more for water we haven’t actually used. No. This does not compute.

We need your help here if you want us to play ball. I am sick of your threatening ads warning us about what is going to happen if we don’t do what you say, when you ride roughshod over all our efforts and betray us when it matters. I am shocked that you have made no real inroads in reducing water consumption in the bad suburbs of Constantia, Fresnaye and Camps Bay when my Woodstock is coming in well under target.

Your handling of this drought has left so much to be desired. You have lurched from shouting school headmaster to ‘our-hands-are-tied’ blamers of National government. Now, as I sit here seething at the sound of that helicopter circling for the fourth time over a very water wise suburb, I want you to understand how I feel. I feel like Mrs. Kippie, and you are taking me for one.

Oh the Humanity

By megan

On February 21, 2018

In Cape Town, complaints dept, deeply personal, me on stage, theatre stuff

I was being chatted to by an actor the other night, and he was shooting the breeze, complaining about chancers in the industry who give the ‘real deal’ a bad name, and bitching about the Cape Town Joburg separation of power and ideology. He spoke about how the Fleur du Cap Awards are hamstrung by old thoughts, how certain directors have fallen into bad habits, and how most actors of a certain age are only just functioning alcoholics. The usual. Blah blah Shakespeare.

And then it happened. This respected and very super talented actor gave a thorough analysis and deeply thought out criticism of a play he had not, actually, in fact seen. There are few times when I am completely at a loss for words. Not that he noticed. His diatribe had come out of a moment where he inhaled mid speech and I had told him about a play that I had in fact seen; a play that I did think was hideous; based on actual first hand experience. On his out breath he started talking about this other play, that he had not seen, but, according to him, could never work because of 1. the director, 2. the cast, 3. the content and 4. how it has been done in the past.

I suddenly realised that this happens a lot. A lot of actors don’t see other work but have opinions on it. I see a lot of work. Some I write about, others not, but I never ever have an opinion on a piece that I have not yet seen.

Next time you get into one of those post-show, a few glasses of wine later monologues in pseudo camaraderie, ask the speech giver up front if they are talking about a play that they have seen.

Advice for recent Drama Graduates

By megan

On February 9, 2018

In Cape Town, complaints dept, deeply personal, theatre stuff

This is an open letter to all recent drama school graduates who are trying to enter the profession, from a very experienced, not always successful, long time fighter in the field.

Dear almost made it,

Firstly, congratulations on completing the introduction to what will be a lifetime of learning, practicing, hoping, developing and waiting. Drama school (I include all of them) is the very beginning of your journey and, if you are anything like I was when I finished my diploma and degree at UCT, you have only just started to understand this world. Yes, it is a great start, but that is what it is – an introduction.

What next? Some of you will wait to get work, hope to get an an agent, go to castings, become bar tenders while you wait. Some of you will tech for other shows, stay part of a theatrical community, do courses, get drunk with your friends, or give up entirely and make a different choice for your life. One or two of you will land that job, make a name for yourself, fill your calendars, win awards and glow and succeed.

Some of you will be bold and take the initiative to create your own work. You will be both praised for this and warned; it is so tough on every level. It is tough to work with no money, and to get others to work for no money, it is tough to publicise a show with no resources, no name to go on, no past history to rely on. It is heart breaking to perform for tiny audiences. All of this is true. So, if you do decide to put on your own work, even with all these things conspiring to make it the hardest thing to achieve, you need to make sure you do the work.

Learn your lines. Rehearse. Rehearse more than you ever did at school. Make sure that you respect the space, the playwright, the director and most importantly, the audience, because there will be people like me, who have been there and done that, who will be sitting in the audience and who will know. We will know that you just haven’t done the work and you are trying to get away with it. Your raw talent, and recent knowledge of voice warm-ups will give you false confidence, but it isn’t enough to pull the wool over our eyes, and you do yourselves a terrible disservice.

Honour the theatrical space by giving it the respect it deserves. Honour your education by knowing that all those things you learned need to be put into practice. Make a commitment to putting on great work, and failing, rather than trying to get away with shit work, or no work.

Whatever you do, do not present shit work, half-baked work, work that shows you up as a chancer, as someone who doesn’t really take their craft seriously. I recognise talent, but I can tell you right now, I have only once ever casted someone because they were talented, even though I was concerned about their reliability and commitment, and I made the biggest mistake.

We see you, those of us in the tiny audience who know how it works, and we know exactly what you are doing. And your friends and family might not tell you the truth, so I am going to. Do not do the barest minimum of work and try to get away with it. It will not serve you.

I hope you know that I have your best interests at heart. I want you to succeed, make beautiful theatre and be brilliant. That is what I want to watch.

Megan

Drought

By megan

On January 5, 2018

In Cape Town, complaints dept, political

In the last couple of days I have received whatsapps and emails and Facebum messages asking me to write my objections to a water levy for us Capetonians, based on the value of our houses, and the rates and taxes we pay. Aside from the fact that Woodstock has had rate hikes only commensurate with the hideousness of most new developments in it, I remain committed to the idea of a water levy, asking people who OWN their houses to pay more for the privilege of running water.

I have made my disgust known with our local government’s handling of the water crisis. Every single element of this utter disaster can be laid squarely at their feet. The looming water crisis in the Western Cape has been known for decades, and government’s cavalier ignoring of the warning signs is virtually criminal. Their usual Jonny come lately, blame everybody else, punishing, threatening style has never been more obvious. They have blamed the citizens of the city, national government, the weather, influx of people to the province; you name it they blame it.

This local government has wasted money on ads where our corrupt mayor whines about showering in a bucket, without any of the irony that that is how the majority of people have been washing for their entire lives.

The depth of this crisis is only now starting to be uncovered, with discoveries that most of our bottled water comes from our severely depleted dams, farming using at least 80% of our scarce resources, and the knee jerk building of temporary desalination plants as effective as wearing protection after having sex.

I wake up every day in a slight panic about water, and Day Zero. It is not a joke. Every time I flush I am reminded of the hideous and inappropriate colonial fuckery we inherited from a water abundant thinking British system. Flushing waste into drinking water is like using DDT on our food. Sickening. Yes, this system is 100% terrible for our particular condition, yet no long term plans for different systems are even being considered.

But, water in South Africa still remains inconceivably cheap. And it is mostly those who can afford it who have the greatest access. By that I mean taps with running water, flushing loos, boreholes, washing machines, dishwashers. In properties owned by people.

So, simply, if you own your property you should pay more for the privilege of having water. Stop complaining about that part of the problem. Suck it up. And, instead of behaving like your corrupt and immature local government, be part of the solution, even if it is paying an extra R150 a month, at the most. Take a deep breath and think about who you are, and where you are, and how you live.

PS. Also, avoid the Water Shedding Cape Town groups on Facebum, unless you want daily access to the worst trolls, haters, blamers and idiots.

Megan's Head

A place where Megan gets off her head.

Category: complaints dept (Page 2 of 23)

Water Tariff Middle Finger

Twitler Helen Zille

#DayZero – open letter to the City of Cape Town

Oh the Humanity

Advice for recent Drama Graduates

Drought

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