Letter to the Editor: Diamond and Dorings was a noise festival

Dear Sir,

It’s with a sensation of cotton wool in my head due to two consecutive  nights of being sleep deprived that I would like to, through the medium of your publication, vent my frustrations at the recent Diamond and Dorings music festival that was held over the Easter Weekend at the Diamond Oval in Cassandra.

This morning I am thankful that Easter Monday is a public holiday. I would never have been able to work today, due to the fact that – even though I live three streets away from the Stadium – I hardly slept on Saturday and Sunday night!

Artists were rehearsing on Saturday night, which I can understand. But I am left to wonder if they really needed to have the volume of the sound system at the stadium turned up so loud? I thought about the residents living closer to the stadium, what if they had plans for attending church on Easter Sunday morning; for Christians this is a very sacred time, but I feel it was trodden upon by the lack of consideration of the organisers!

On Thursday, I read with keen interest the article about the plans for the festival that was reported in the DFA. A few of my fellow residents I spoke to agreed with me, that the situation was not ideal, but if they kept to what was reported in your newspaper, it would at least be tolerable.

I refer especially to the fact that the noise was supposed to be an issue for ONE day, not two. There was also supposed to be a noise cut off at 2am – the noise, however, went on till around 4.30am. This brought to mind what one resident said in your article: “We have elderly people and babies here. The music goes on past the allowed time. It affects everyone. There needs to be respect for the people who live here.” 

This concern was brushed aside with disdain.

Did your reporter get the time wrong? Or did the organisers just arbitrarily decide to push the music festival till almost sunrise on Monday morning? Whatever the case, I feel the residents of Cassandra have been lied to!

And how did Cassandra benefit from this noisy fiasco?

Some (only SOME) roads in our neighbourhood had the potholes patched. However, looking at the quality of the work, these patches will be washed away during the next heavy rains; so thanks a lot Sol Plaatje municipality! Oh, and the grass was cut – that’s excellent. However, it’s a bit discouraging for residents to realise that the municipality will only do the work that they are being paid to do, the work that residents pay rates for, when a big festival comes to town that puts extra cash in their coffers. It reeks of something pretty rotten!

I do also believe that many of my fellow Cassandra residents have a right to be frustrated. There was no shortage of other suitable venues in the city. 

The Skate Park hosted a concert a few months back. The convention centre opposite the Big hole is another possible venue. Or the municipality could have taken their surplus tar and weed whackers and cleared an acre of veld somewhere away from a residential area and had their party to their hearts’ content.

Overall, I feel that this was a very poor performance by the municipality. They should have done better. And in the end, what we learn from this episode, once again, is that we can not take the promises, assurances, and statements made by these officials at face value; they do not care for anyone but themselves.

All we can hope for is that one day, in the near future, we can elect a group of councillors that the people of the city can rely on. This lot certainly won’t have my vote!

Yours in frustration, bitterness and exhaustion

A sleep-deprived Cassandra resident