Tag Archives: Mayor Patricia de Lille

Cape Town tourists miss out on Cape Festive season Minstrel Carnival highlight!

minstrels+xxxWhat a shame that the many visitors to Cape Town missed out on one of the city’s annual and unique highlights over the Festive Season.  The ‘Tweede Nuwe Jaar’ Minstrel march traditionally takes place on 2 January, but was postponed to 5 January (originally cancelled due to religious reasons, but then delayed again due to lack of parking, bus transport, and VIP seating), and then to 10 January (but this date clashed with the ANC 103rd birthday celebrations held in Cape Town, at which some Minstrel troupes participated).  Now the date of the Minstrel march appears to be set for Saturday 17 January, a date on which a minimal number of local and international tourists will still be in Cape Town!

In the last few years the minstrel parade association Continue reading →

Cape Town Mayoral Committee for Tourism, Events, and Marketing Grant Pascoe defects to ANC, loses portfolio with immediate effect!

Cape Town StadiumWhat excellent news it was to see on Twitter yesterday afternoon that now former Councillor Grant Pascoe has defected to the ANC for ‘personal reasons’, a decision Mayor Patricia de Lille (who appeared to be a close friend), said caught her by surprise.  She announced that he has been stripped of his position as Councillor and as Mayoral Committee member of Tourism, Events, and Marketing with immediate effect.   We have been very critical of Pascoe’s lack of marketing knowledge and leadership, once again leaving our City’s tourism industry without a marketing plan for the forthcoming winter, which kicked in earlier than usual last week!

The announcement was made by the ANC, and not by Pascoe himself.  The political party said: ‘Councillor Pascoe joins an overwhelming number of South Africans, who despite finding themselves in other political parties, recognise the ANC as the only organisation with the track record, capacity, and determination to build a South Africa’.  Pascoe explained that he was unhappy with the direction which the DA was taking, and had discussed this internally.  To avoid a fight, he decided to leave. He said he feels ‘at home‘ in the ANC, EWN reported! Yet on Pascoe’s Facebook page for his ‘political organisation‘, his ‘About Grant Pascoe’ still states: ‘The Democratic Alliance is South Africa and Cape Town’s best hope for a better future for all our people‘!

Pascoe served as a City of Cape Town DA Councillor for 13 years, and as a Mayoral Committee member for eight years, the last four of which were heading up the Tourism, Events, and Marketing portfolio.  Two years ago he initiated the creation of a Tourism, Events and Marketing directorate, which reported to him and is headed up by Anton Groenewald.  Pascoe’s sole contribution was to bring soccer events to Cape Town, which made no impact on the tourism industry in terms of bookings, reflecting his personal interest in soccer.   From the outset we have criticised Pascoe’s incompetence in the Tourism portfolio: Continue reading →

MyCiTi Bus losses: will Cape Town ratepayers have to pay?

My CiTi Bus imagesA hard-hitting Open Letter to Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille and Councillor Brett Herron was published in the Letters page of the Cape Times last week, and echoes many of our observations about the failure of the MyCiTi Bus service on the city centre and Camps Bay routes.  The newspaper also published a defensive response from Councillor Brett Herron, Mayoral Committee member for Transport and ultimately responsible for the city’s public transport service.

Emiritus Professor of Forensics at UCT Deon Knobel, a respected pathologist and lecturer, has observed, as have we (we have Tweeted this regularly) that the MyCiTi Buses travelling in Camps Bay and along Kloof Street are still close to empty three months after the inception of the routes.  Our blogpost after a trial trip from Camps Bay to the Silo section (previously called the Clocktower) of the V&A Waterfront highlighted that the trip took too long (90 minutes one way), and that commuters who wanted to get onto the bus did not have a MyCiTi Bus card with which to pay for their trip.  Extensive queues are still seen in Camps Bay, waiting for taxis, despite the MyCiTi Bus charging next to nothing!

Professor Knobel’s letter documented his observations over the last month in Gardens, Kloof Street, Kloofnek Road, and Camps Bay that not one of the MyCiTi Buses had ‘more than five or six passengers in the bus, and not infrequently no more than three or four. One bus even carried the amazing figure of one passenger’.  In addition, he had observe eight ‘virtually empty‘ buses on the N2 highway, returning to the city from the airport.  Given the poor occupancy of the MyCiTi Buses, Professor Knobel asked De Lille and Herron the following questions: Continue reading →

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 28/29 November

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*   The 15th Cape Town International Jazz Festival will be held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre on 28 and 29 March.  The top artists performing in the past fifteen years  can be expected on the stage next year.  Last year 60000 jazz lovers attended the jazz performances.   Early bird specials are available for the first 1000 tickets booked at Computicket.

Rashid Lombard, CEO of espAfrika, organisers of the Jazz Festival, said: ‘Fifteen years ago, we couldn’t have imagined that the festival would have such a massive impact. It’s got its own beat now – and we just love the fact that we are able to keep giving people what they want and to promote jazz and jazz related as a music genre in this country’. (received via media release from networx public relations)

*  Taipei has been announced as World Design Capital 2016, it was announced today by Cape Town Design NPC, the company managing World Design Capital 2014 for Cape Town. (received via newsletter)

*   Ellerman House has opened a Wine Gallery, to the irritation of Neil Pendock, whose petite (2 x 4 m space, and 6 bottles only per month) Wine Continue reading →