The Great Kimberley White Elephant Hunt

By Monty Quill

ATTENTION all thrill-seekers of municipal mayhem and aficionados of untamed spending - dust off your safari suits because it’s time to embark on the great Kimberley White Elephant Hunt, where fearless financiers and budgetary explorers track down majestic beasts that are elusive, excessive and wildly fond of gobbling up budgets.

Grab your bureaucratic binoculars, sharpen your procurement pens and saddle up for an expedition through the vast administrative wilderness, where every new fiscal year brings fresh chances to track, capture, and exhibit these costly beasts in all their misplaced grandeur. But beware dear adventurer: these white elephants are wily creatures. They know how to blend into the environment, hiding in plain sight as “public infrastructure investments” or “community development projects”.

Our hunt begins, as all good hunts do, with a trap - set with bait that only a white elephant would find irresistible: an announcement. Yes, nothing lures these creatures out of the woodwork like a grand unveiling of a new multi-million-rand project. The trick is to use the right kind of bait, like “state-of-the-art”, “world-class”, or “game-changing”. The more ambitious the promise, the more likely a white elephant will come sauntering out of the budget committee, trunk held high.

Take, for instance, the Kimberley Mental Health Hospital, our local prize specimen. At over a billion rand, it’s one of the biggest catches on record. This particular white elephant spent more than a decade roaming the funding plains, evading capture despite repeated attempts by successive local administrations. Every time a deadline approached, it cleverly doubled back, adding more “unexpected delays” and “necessary design revisions” to throw off its pursuers. In the end, it took years and many millions more than anticipated to finally corner it, proving that the white elephant is indeed a resourceful beast.

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For the budding white elephant hunter, it’s essential to know what to look for. These creatures leave behind unmistakable signs of their passing. You’ll often spot tracks such as “escalating costs”, “unforeseen delays”, and the occasional pile of “external contractor disputes”. Follow these clues, and you’ll be well on your way to discovering a whole herd.

The Homevale fire station is a classic case study. Its tracks first appeared in 2019, when the initial R17 million budget seemed reasonable enough for a public safety project. But soon enough, reports of “delays” and “structural defects” began to surface - tell-tale signs that a white elephant was on the loose. It didn’t take long before whispers of “maladministration investigations” emerged, signalling that our quarry was well and truly running amok. With each delay and cost overrun, the evidence grew stronger: another white elephant had been caught on the prowl.

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Bagging a white elephant is no easy feat. It requires a certain cunning, a willingness to wield buzzwords and draft feasibility studies with a straight face. The key is to appear serious and determined about the “strategic importance” of the endeavour. Speak with conviction about the project’s potential to “put Kimberley on the map”. Propose more funding to ensure that the project is “brought to completion” (however loosely that term may be defined). Remember, a good white elephant doesn’t just wander into the city hall - it needs to be coaxed, cornered, and, ideally, perpetually postponed.

Once cornered, these beasts can be surprisingly docile, content to sit as half-finished structures or empty facilities for years. In fact, the longer they stay unfinished, the more valuable they seem to become, like vintage collectables gaining a patina of “timeless allure”. Who needs functioning fire stations or mental health facilities when you can have a white elephant with “historical significance”?

And where there’s one white elephant, there are usually more lurking nearby. Kimberley’s white elephant herd is a large and diverse group. Some are content to remain in the shadows, such as ambitious housing projects that never quite materialise, while others like to make a splash, popping up as grand sporting facilities that end up more like sporting metaphors for failure.

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Tracking the herd requires a keen eye and an ability to follow the budget trail. Notice how certain projects reappear year after year in spending plans, each time with a slightly different name but the same familiar scent of squandered funds. The trick is never to finish a project outright - keep the elephant alive and grazing by frequently “reallocating resources” and “adjusting timelines”. This way, even if one white elephant is captured, another can be bred from the remnants of the last.

No hunt would be complete without a visit to the trophy room, where Kimberley proudly displays its captured white elephants. Here, the local mental hospital sits like a taxidermied beast, forever frozen in a state of “just about to open”. Nearby, the Homevale fire station can be found, still under construction, with scaffolding in place as though it were posing for an Absurdist painting titled “Perpetual Incompletion”.

Other prize specimens include an array of ambitious infrastructure projects, from grand transportation hubs to high-tech business parks that exist mainly as parking lots for tumbleweeds. Each one tells a story of lofty aspirations and budget lines that stretched as far as the imagination. Kimberley’s trophy room is a testament to the city’s indefatigable spirit - always aiming for the moon, even if it often ends up with nothing more than a few decorative craters.

As Kimberley looks to the future, the white elephant hunt shows no signs of abating. With each new budget, there will be fresh tracks to follow, new grand announcements to make, and undoubtedly, new delays and budget overruns to bemoan. It’s all part of the game - one that has become a time-honoured tradition in our fair city.

So, to all the budding hunters out there: Keep your eyes sharp and your expense reports sharper. There’s always another white elephant just waiting to be tracked down. The true thrill isn’t in bagging the beast; it’s in keeping the hunt alive. After all, in Kimberley, the real sport lies not in completing projects, but in perpetually chasing the dream.

Happy hunting!