Politician Enoch Godongwana promised over 700 new jobs, billionaire Adrian Gardiner vowed to turn the dying town of Alicedale into a “top-class tourist attraction” and rugby boss Oregan Hoskins said he was building a R30-million rugby academy.
In 2003, their ambitious plans were hailed as a miracle cure for the depressed Eastern Cape town and even won international awards. But, eight years down the line, all the tough talk has come to nought.
Today, angry residents of the town of 4000 and investors say the string of broken promises has left them with only a herd of white elephants.
They include a Gary Player-designed championship golf course, a scaled-down hotel, an empty residential golf estate, an abandoned restaurant and tourism centre, and a specially created game reserve.
The sportsfields in the town are virtually unusable, and almost 100 desperate investors are trying to ditch their golf estate stands, bought for around R400000, for just a seventh of the value.
At a 2003 dinner, Godongwana, then MEC for finance and economic affairs and now deputy minister of economic development, challenged Gardiner to find a solution to an unemployment rate of over 90% in the former railway junction town near Grahamstown.
Gardiner, whose five-star Shamwari reserve adjoins Alicedale, agreed to create an upmarket tourist mecca, hundreds of jobs and training academies in a rand-for-rand deal.
A R20-million publicprivate partnership was initiated, while private investors poured in an additional R60-million.
Godongwana said in his budget speech in 2003 that the initiative, known as the “Qhorha project”, would “revitalise the small town” and “serve as a demonstration project” to other dying small towns.
But, instead of a projected 5000 to 7000 tourists, residents say the town and golf course received only a “trickle”, while the game reserve is back in private hands.
Representing concerned residents, Eli Konstant insisted that Alicedale was still “a stunning opportunity in the right hands”. She estimated that “only about 75 jobs” were actually created and unemployment remained at around 85%.
In addition, in 2007, SA Rugby Union president Hoskins announced that the organisation had “established the SA Rugby Institute in Alicedale”. But this week he confirmed that the project had been “cancelled completely”.
He said a revised cost of R39-million had proved “impossible”.
Herbert Bruintjies, a township resident and local rugby club chairman, said the sportsfield was “dangerous to play on” and the clubhouse had been vandalised, despite four years of repeated promises by both SARU and the Makana municipality.
Gardiner said his Mantis hotels group had sold the once luxurious Bushman Sands resort when “the economy turned against us”, but insisted: “I have not given up on Alicedale.”
The hotel was bought by a local church group, River Corporation, which now offers discount family stays.
Gardiner said he had also invested in the golf estate and had “written off plenty of money”.
Daphne Timm, head of the Pam Golding estate agency in Grahamstown, said 194 golf estate stands had been bought for between R375000 and R465000. But only three of more than 90 sellers had managed to sell in the past 18 months — for just R75000 a plot. Only 10 investors built on the 194 plots. “In my 17 years in this industry, I have never seen such a collapse in investment values,” she said.
Godongwana’s spokesman, Mandilakhe Mantlana, said he could not comment because “this happened a long time ago and, as of now, I do not have the facts”.
Jonathan Bishop, former head of Alicedale Investments, which developed the hotel and golf estate, admitted the project had “not worked as planned”.
