The Coega Development Corporation (CDC) has backtracked at the eleventh hour regarding years of promises to restore the iconic Hougham Park homestead.
This is as a result of the CDC receiving only 38% of its proposed operational budget for 2018-2019 from the national Treasury, according to a letter from CDC operations business unit executive manager Fezile Ndema to Johannesburg resident Janet Drysdale.
Drysdale, 68, whose cousin David Crews owned the home before it was taken over by the CDC in 2007, visits family in the Bay annually.
She has been closely involved in the preservation of the split-level house built in 1828 for Hougham Hudson, Port Elizabeth’s first civil commissioner and resident magistrate.
For at least three years the CDC has repeatedly assured historians, the media and Bay residents that restoration of the dilapidated building would take place following the arrest of vandals.
Ndema’s letter dated July 11, said Hougham Park and many other activities that required funding would have to wait for the next financial year, in hopes that the requisite funding would be made available.
In June Zwelephemba Zekani, 23, Masixole Hlangane, 26, and Phumlani Heshu, 28, appeared in the Motherwell Magistrate’s Court on a charge of malicious damage to property, after being caught red-handed vandalising the property.
They were released on warning. At the time CDC spokesman Ayanda Vilakazi said the restoration would proceed after the arrests, however nothing materialised.
Drysdale said: “How is it possible that over a period of 60 years, two generations of one family consisting of only four people managed to not only maintain, preserve and protect this historic property but to improve and beautify it with limited resources but the CDC with all its resources, both financial and human, has managed to reduce it to an uninhabitable eyesore within the space of eight years?”
CDC spokesman Vilakazi said: “The correspondence is directed to Mrs Drysdale and its contents are solely for her attention. It would be remiss of the CDC to respond on media queries on a matter that is directed to the recipient of the correspondence.
“Suffice to say, on the budget shortfall of the CDC, the organisation is not at liberty to expand on the matter.”