En Passant: The Paddadam 39 years on

RECENT talk about the rehabilitation of the Paddadam reminded me that I’d seen a reference to it in an old copy I’ve got of the Vryheid Gazette. I dug it out and there it was – an official notice from the “Borough of Vryheid” in the Vryheid Gazette dated February 28, 1975; that’s 39 years ago.

The notice is in the name of the then Town Clerk, a Mr PJW Grabe. A Town Clerk was what we now call a Municipal Manager, although in them days, my child, a Town Clerk did not sit for days in his car, parked in the municipal offices’ car park, doing nothing.

Anyway, PJW Grabe advised the public of the:

“CLOSING OF THE POND AT THE NORTHERN END OF PARK STREET FOR ANGLING”

He then said:

“The above pond was recently opened for angling on an experimental basis [for] the General Public. In view of the fact that the pond and surrounding land will be developed as a park, it is herewith notified that angling in the pond is prohibited from the date of publication of this notice. Trespassers will be prosecuted. The co-operation of the public will be appreciated.”

So, it would seem that it was in 1975 that the Paddadam as we used to understand it was born, that the trees on the north side were planted, the grass cut into lawns and the swings, roundabout, jungle-gym, see-saw installed. It was probably then too that the old road roller (was this an old municipal road roller?) was dragged there, parked and painted in bright colours for little boys to climb all over.

I don’t know what this development meant, I don’t know if that was when they built the retaining wall on the south side, and sorted out the overflow pipes under the road across the dam wall. I don’t know how deep the dam was nor where the reeds began. I only really got to know the Paddadam about 10 years later.

In 1985 I lived for a while with Doris (Doris No 3) just around the corner at Danvolet Flats in Smal Street, and the Paddadam was our recreational area, and it was lekker. Young Jimmy used to say he was going fishing there, and there was never any question about his safety. In fact you often, if not always, saw boys there fishing in the afternoons and at weekends. I only ever saw Jimmy pulling out little fish, no more than about 8cm long, tilapia I’d guess, but my ol’ mate Leon used to catch other bigger fish at Klipfontein and Bloemveld dams, and release them into the Paddadam. Some of their great, great grandchildren, or grandfish I suppose, were left high and dry when the wall was recently breached the water drained away.

Slowly though, and then not so slowly, the reeds began to take over, and until fairly recently there was none of that floating aquatic fern, I think called salvinia and sometimes Kariba weed. When they started to empty the Paddadam two weeks ago it was covered, literally, with that weed. The reeds need a optimum depth of water in which to grow, and as the Paddadam silted up over the years, that optimum depth was realised in an ever-advancing crawl towards the wall.

Years ago, when the municipality had an effective and self-contained Parks & Recreation department, and when the public was asking questions about the advancing reed bed, the manager of that department, a bloke called Andre van der Walt, who’s still in town, put it to council that the dam would have to be emptied and dried out, and then require the use of a earth-moving vehicles to do the job.

But there was no money, and so things have been allowed to deteriorate to such a degree that perhaps less than a sixth of the dam was reed free, and judging by the depth of the water there, it would have been swallowed up in reeds in a year or two. Neglect was certainly the name of the game. Funny that; funny that there was never any money for rehabilitating a well-used public park and yet over R120,000 could be spent on caps and t-shirts for an afternoon of mayoral games. Yeah, very funny.

When he was a councillor, ol’ Willie Burger, some years ago now, dedicated some of his… I dunno, let’s call it discretionary spending of a grant that I seem to recollect came from the Zululand District Municipality (but I may be wrong), but ol’ Willie spent it on a small ablution block at the Paddadam. Brick under tile, it looked lekker, and it met a demand from the public for toilets at the Paddadam.

It also met a demand from the informal building sector who saw the facility as a free source of material to include fixtures and fittings, no job too big or small, let us quote you. And what they couldn’t carry off they wrecked, smashed, demolished.

Myself, personally, I don’t think we need toilets there. They’ll only get vandalised again and again, and I don’t think ratepayers are going to pay for a 24-hour guard there for the rest of time. But it would be nice if the Paddadam could be restored to what it was, because it was lekker.