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Stoep Chat

’s weekly stories, observations and conversations from Knysna and beyond.

29 October 2026

Your Vote is Your Voice

Just a few days to the election when we’ll make a cross next to the person we think will make the best councillor of those standing. Someone honest, who works hard, pushes for real service delivery, spends the budget on pressing needs, and has the interests of the town at heart. Will you find a candidate like that on your ballot paper? Most probably not - but I definitely think you should still vote.

Why? Because there is a wonderful smell of change in the air: the Revised White Paper on Local Government. Once this comes into force, it could become a game changer for local councils. When President Ramaphosa launched the Revised White Paper last week, he didn’t mince his words: “Too many communities have grown accustomed to services that are unreliable, infrastructure that is deteriorating and municipalities that are unresponsive. This cannot continue.” Exactly. “We underestimated how politicised appointments would open the door to corruption,” he said. Yes, you did! “There must be consequences when public resources are stolen, procurement is manipulated,…

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22 October 2026

Bridge Over the River Kwai

Seeing the recent images of flooded Bangkok brought back memories of my two-month backpacking trip to Thailand in the early 1990s. Five of us travelled the length and breadth of Thailand, and I loved it. A few days before our flight home, I saw a notice advertising trips to the River Kwai. I remembered as a kid hearing my older brother talking enthusiastically about the movie Bridge on the River Kwai. I wanted to see this bridge.

We took a bus to Kanchanaburi and hired bicycles. I smiled with delight as I cycled across the famous bridge, then saw the war graves on the other side. I put down my bike and walked among the mass of white crosses, the sun beating down and the cicadas shrieking. So many never made it home. The bridge over the River Kwai was part of the “Death Railway”. During World War 2 the Japanese brutally forced about 60,000 Australian, Dutch and British prisoners of war, and about 100,000 local people, to build the railway from Thailand to Burma. Many thousands…

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15 October 2026

Bringing Strandlopers Home to Noetzie

Exciting news. The remains of two people who lived at Noetzie thousands of years ago may be reburied here at long last. This would end a saga that started twenty years ago when the skeleton of a young “Strandloper”, or San, was dug up in the grounds of the Pezula Castle at Noetzie during unauthorised excavation work.

The skeleton was found in front of the castle in a prehistoric midden - a collection of shells, bones, tools and other remains discarded by humans who had lived at the coast thousands of years ago. Prehistoric coastal middens were built up over centuries by nomadic San people – often called Strandlopers - and are a mine of information for archaeologists. Now Kai Terblanche, leader of the Knysna Khoi-Khoi, is in talks with the Iziko Museum about the reburial of the two skeletons, he hopes at Noetzie. “It is a lengthy process. We still need a burial space,” Terblanche said.…

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8 October 2026

Fishy Business

Garden Route locals are lucky to live where fresh fish and seafood are readily available. I love fresh fish, preferably fried, but no thick batter. Catches today are nothing like they were in our grandparents’ time. The reason? Overfishing, illegal fishing and destructive catch methods like bottom trawling.

Around 31% of South Africa’s commercial fishery stocks are either heavily depleted or have collapsed – reflecting a global pattern. This is not new. I remember breaking a news story about our collapsed and over-exploited fish stocks many years ago, which led to bans on catching certain species. At the time the news editor asked how one would know what fish species to avoid buying or eating in restaurants. None of us knew. Luckily, the SA branch of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) launched its Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative (SASSI) soon afterwards. SASSI produced a little pocket consumer guide…

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1 October 2026

Medals: Sad Memories of War

My sister Julie was doing a bit of sorting out at the weekend and came across a World War 1 “Victory Medal” that had been awarded to our great uncle George Metelerkamp. I love these unexpected links to “the ancestors”.

The medal glows bright like gold, but is actually bronze with a shiny finish. On one side is the figure of a winged woman depicting “Victory” and on the other is the inscription: “The Great War for Civilization 1914 – 1919”. Lt G Metelerkamp is stamped on the side. Victory Medals were awarded to those who had served in the Allied Forces in World War 1. Julie's online search described it as “a profoundly poignant piece of history. Records indicate that your medal's recipient tragically made the ultimate sacrifice during the Great War”. George died in East Africa in 1917.…

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24 September 2026

Every Murderer is Somebody’s Friend

Monday’s cartoon in the Daily Maverick by South Africa’s top cartoonist Zapiro was simple but effective. It was about the Kempton Park murders. The bodies of the nine victims were laid out and next to each was her name, age and what she had been doing when she was murdered: “She went for a jog; She went to work; She went on a date” and so on.

The caption said it all: “Women Doing Normal Things, In an Abnormal Society.” The Kempton Park murder victims, all women in their 20s and 30s, were found between mid-July and mid-September. As the body count rose, so did the public outcry, with protest marches, petitions and vigils. But here’s a chilling thought: nine women murdered in two months is way below South Africa’s average murder rate for women. According to SA Police statistics, between 58 and 60 people are murdered in South Africa every day, of which 15 are women. Just think about that: It means about 900 women were…

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17 September 2026

Mental Anchors Help Survival

Sanjay told Reuters that he knew every inch of the tunnel, but after the flood it was so completely transformed he could not find his way out. He decided to stay put and wait for help. Thoughts of his wife and two-year-old daughter gave him strength and he felt he should not give in to […]

Sanjay told Reuters that he knew every inch of the tunnel, but after the flood it was so completely transformed he could not find his way out. He decided to stay put and wait for help. Thoughts of his wife and two-year-old daughter gave him strength and he felt he should not give in to panic. “So I kept reciting God’s name and praying.” He recited the Hare Krishna mantra - a repetitive chant where the same few words are said over and over – for the entire 10 days. “The mantra gave me a different kind of feeling, almost…

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10 September 2026

Dolly Parton and Gloria Steinem: Feminists Both

Two American women I admired have died: Gloria Steinem, 92, and Dolly Parton, 80. On the face of it the two women seem to have little in common. Dolly was a country singer and…

Gloria Steinem campaigned for women's rights by marching, protesting, founding a woman's movement and trying to change discriminatory laws. Then there was Dolly. She did not get involved in politics and when asked what she thought of feminism, replied that she didn't like labels. But a feminist she was. Let's look at her life: first, she was a businesswoman at a time when many women were not. She founded Dollywood, a huge financial success, as were her record deals. Second, many of her songs tackled feminist issues. Take 9 to 5, the soundtrack she wrote for the 9 to 5…

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3 September 2026

Fossil Fuels Caused Nepal’s Devastating Flood

I was utterly gobsmacked at the videos showing the massive flood tearing down the river valley in Nepal last week. People fleeing as a giant wave smashed up the border post buildings, sweeping away…

In a nutshell: global warming. One excellent video explained it all. The first, incorrect, reports were that an earthquake had caused the massive flood because seismic instruments around the world had recorded what appeared to be a 5.2 magnitude earthquake just before the floodwaters hit. But by looking at satellite images scientists soon realised that the seismic wave had not come from underground, but from a giant chunk of mountain and glacier that had broken off in the Himalayas 20km north of the Nepal/Tibet border. This fell 1200m into the valley at such speed that when it landed it created…

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27 August 2026

Black Rhino Teenagers Hang Out Together

Any of you who have been on trail in game reserves will know how scary it is when your ranger takes you into thick bush because that is where you find black rhino. Unlike…

Any of you who have been on trail in game reserves will know how scary it is when your ranger takes you into thick bush because that is where you find black rhino. Unlike their placid white rhino cousins, black rhino are quite fierce and charge anything that comes into their territory. Interesting new black rhino research dropped into my inbox today from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). WWF has been running a programme for 23 years to increase numbers of these seriously endangered animals by transporting some to new areas to start new breeding populations. A fantastic programme. They…

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20 August 2026

Toll Road to Take Trucks out of Town?

Three road accidents involving trucks in four days - and two people killed. What will it take to get the N2 bypass built so freight trucks can stay out of Knysna? It looks as…

Three road accidents involving trucks in four days - and two people killed. What will it take to get the N2 bypass built so freight trucks can stay out of Knysna? It looks as if the answer may be a toll road. It's crazy that if you want to go, say, from the bank to a coffee shop, you have to cross a national highway. Remember the woman who was killed by a passing truck near the post office as she waited to cross the road? I'm pretty sure truck drivers would welcome an N2 bypass, but I hear some…

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13 August 2026

Humans Cause Wildlife to Evolve

Did you know that some birds living in cities have changed their songs so they can be heard above the roar of traffic? Most of us love hearing birds sing, but of course they…

Did you know that some birds living in cities have changed their songs so they can be heard above the roar of traffic? Most of us love hearing birds sing, but of course they don't sing for our entertainment. They do so to mark their territories and to attract mates, so it's a serious problem if they cannot hear each other. And guess what? Researchers at the Centre of Ecological Research in Hungary have found that in order to be heard in noisy cities, some species of songbirds not only sing more loudly than they do in the wild, but…

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6 August 2026

A Mammoth Drought

The drought in Europe is so bad that the level of the mighty Danube River has sunk to its lowest level ever recorded. Europe's second largest river, the Danube flows through 10 countries, but…

In Serbia a German warship, sunk during World War 2, was exposed for the first time, while in Bulgaria, villagers found the jaw and tusks of a mammoth. It must have been there for thousands of years. Took me back to when I worked on a University of Cambridge archaeological dig on the Channel Island of Jersey, known for its woolly mammoth fossils. I knew one of the archaeologists, Kate Scott, who had organised that I join them while backpacking overseas in 1977. The Jersey dig was in a cave called La Cotte. It was April, which I thought meant…

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30 July 2026

A Thousand Years of Ice Cream

Aren't the fires in Spain and France terrible? Thousands evacuated, houses burned, forests destroyed. Experts say it's a result of global warming that caused abnormal heat waves in Europe, which in turn dried the…

Aren't the fires in Spain and France terrible? Thousands evacuated, houses burned, forests destroyed. Experts say it's a result of global warming that caused abnormal heat waves in Europe, which in turn dried the veld to tinder. A great shame, particularly as Europe has done more to reduce climate-changing fossil fuel emissions than most. There is often someone who scores in a crisis, isn't there, and in Europe right now I hear it's the ice cream sellers. This got me reading about ice cream - and I fell down a rum-and-raisin rabbit hole. Did you know that people were making…

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23 July 2026

Two Soccer Greats: Messi and Lamine Yamal

There is something compelling about a World Cup Final that makes even non-soccer fans like me get caught up in the excitement. Before Sunday's final between Spain and Argentina, I read an u…

There is something compelling about a World Cup Final that makes even non-soccer fans like me get caught up in the excitement. Before Sunday's final between Spain and Argentina, I read an utterly fascinating story about a meeting 20 years ago between star Spanish player Lamine Yamal as a baby, and the football great, Lionel Messi, Argentina's captain and named the All Time Men's World Best Player. Some background: Lamine Yamal's father, Mounir Nasraoul, is from Morocco and his mother, Sheila Ebana, from Equatorial Guinea. They met in Barcelona, had him when they were teenagers and separated when he was…

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16 July 2026

Things are Looking Up

Some good news. Knysna Municipality reported on Monday that it had made “significant progress” in improving the town's water security and sewage management. Not a moment too soon. It added that “recent claims sugges…

Some good news. Knysna Municipality reported on Monday that it had made “significant progress” in improving the town's water security and sewage management. Not a moment too soon. It added that “recent claims suggesting Knysna remains one of the 75 failed municipalities are based on outdated information that does not reflect the progress made through the current recovery programme”. The most recent Auditor-General's national report had identified only three such municipalities in the Western Cape, and Knysna was not one of them. Well no, but neither was it anywhere near a success. While it's great that Knysna got a clean…

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