February 3
It’s long been a standing joke on the North Coast, but now it’s official. Zimbali is a foreign country.
If you’re not a property owner in the estate and are going there to see someone, stay in one of the hotels or play golf, your drivers licence and car licence will be scanned or you will have to produce a passport to gain entry.
The so-called ‘secure’ estates around the country have largely been very successful in keeping their residents safe, but the glitter of all that expensive furniture and top-of-the-range vehicles behind those fences has not escaped the attention of the criminal gangs.
Stories abound of criminals renting apartments in the estates and having gained a free pass to come and go at will, plundering houses whose owners live elsewhere.
Zimbali has been no exception and the estate management says: “With the modern criminals turning to estates to conduct their criminal activities and due to the large number of fraudulent identity thefts, the only way we can be sure of a person and the motor vehicle they are driving, is a valid driver’s license and motor vehicle license disc.” Or a passport, if you don’t have a SA licence.
And if you’ve ever wondered whether security reads those entry slips you have to fill in and sign, yes, they’ve picked up the clever chaps who sign themselves as ‘Mickey Mouse’. Now they’ll have to produce a licence and fill out the form correctly, or they simply won’t be allowed in.
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In spite of doom and gloom on the TV about Eurozone failures and recessions, depressions and worse, the perception that the Dolphin Coast is the place to invest and live is unabated.
Look over the fence in Simbithi and Zimbali and you’ll see houses going up everywhere. In reality, new building plans are slightly down from the peak of a couple of years ago, but still the area is growing faster than just about anywhere else in the country.
The seeming uncontrollable growth of the area brings its own share of woes, from electricity failures to the tap running dry in the middle of holiday season, to potholes and the disaster of the N2 ‘spaghetti junction’. By the way, after the lame excuse from Umgeni Water that the water shortage in December was because of the growth of the area, a little birdie tells me the truth is more likely that the King Shaka airport development is siphoning off far more water than Umgeni planned for, and that was at the root of our problems. More about that during the year.
Visitors come down here at Christmas, see the bustling town and think ‘Wow, this would be a great place to live! So many people! So much money!’ Then they empty out their piggy banks, buy that little bed and breakfast/restaurant/salon by the sea and wait for the bucks to roll in. Sadly, season ends and the people just evaporate!
Last time I counted, there were more than 80 restaurants, cafes or takeaways on the highest traffic part of the coast, between Umdloti and Tinley Manor. Can you believe it! From the bottom of my heart I wish them all well, but I just don’t see how the population along the narrow coastal strip which can’t be more than 30 000, can sustain that many eateries.
The other statistic that is cause for wonder is that there are about 50 hairdressers and beauty salons in business just in the Ballito/Salt Rock area. Not only are we the best-fed population in the country, but we’re the best groomed as well! It proves the old Farmer Brown chicken advert payline ‘you look so good ‘cos you eat so good!’
We’re also the best-read. There are now 10 newspapers and three magazines operating in this lower North Coast region and I hear rumours every month of yet another publication in the planning stages.
It’s quite funny really, because the whole publishing industry is in shock over the effects of the Internet and forecasts of doom and gloom over what digital publishing is going to do, yet the Dolphin Coast is attracting more publications than ever before. By ‘funny’ I don’t mean funny ha ha, because it’s not, but funny peculiar. Something’s got to give, surely!
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A Ballito boy came home from school and told his mother he had been given a part in the school play.
“Wonderful,” says the mother, “What part is it?”
The boy says “I play the part of the Ballito husband!”
The mother scowls and says: “Go back and tell your teacher you want a speaking part.”
